It's not the content of our dreams that gives our second heart its dark color; it's the thoughts that go through our heads in those wakeful moments when sleep won't come. And those are the things we never tell anyone at all.

I sing of a woman with ink on her hands and pictures hidden beneath her hair. I sing of a dog with skin like velvet pushed the wrong way.I sing of the shape a fallen body makes in the dirt beneath a tree, and I sing of an ordinary man who is wanted to know things no human being could tell him.This is the true beginning.

Because for most of us, suicide is a moment we'll never choose. It's only for people like Lexy, who know they might choose eventually, who believe they have a choice to make.

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.

It's gratifying to know that you've appeared in someone else's dreams. It's proof that you exist, in a way, proof that you have substance and value outside the walls of your own mind.

Had I known but yesterday what I know today, I’d have taken out your two grey eyes and put in eyes of clay. And had I known but yesterday you’d be no more my own, I’d have taken out your heart of flesh and put in one of stone.

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