It's true, isn't it, that each of us has two hearts? The secret heart, curled behind like a fist, living gnarled and shrunken beneath the plain, open one we use every day.

I wake up in that state of grief when you can tell you've been mourning even in your sleep.

It's true, isn't it, that each of us has two hearts? The secret heart, curled behind like a fist, living gnarled and shrunken beneath the plain, open one we use every day.

I'm not going to feel guilty for wanting the things that everyone wants.

You wake up and you feel - what? Heaviness, an ache inside, a weight, yes. A soft crumpling of the flesh. A feeling like all the surfaces inside you have been rubbed raw. A voice in your head - no, not voices, not like hearing voices, nothing that crazy, just your own inner voice, the one that says 'Turn left at the corner' or 'Don't forget to stop at the post office,' only now it's saying, 'I hate myself.' It's saying, 'I want to die.'

The conclusion I have reached is that, above all, dogs are witnesses.

Perhaps she saw before her a lifetime of walking on the ruined earth and chose instead a single moment in the air.