To love--to fall--is not a question. To touch--to kiss--to speak--those are questions.

I text tiny a minute later. MADE NEW GAY FRIEND. And he texts back PROGRESS!!!

It will affect me in ways I can't even begin to get my mind around. This day is a dark crater. There is no room for songs. The songs are wrong. Every song is wrong. And I don't know what to do without music.

His books are kept on freestanding shelves hung at different angles on a sea-green wall. They defy gravity, as good books should.

I have no idea how he knows when I need him. We can go weeks without speaking, and then, when my blue moods threaten to turn black, he will show up and tell me my moods are azure indigo cerulean cobalt periwinkle and suddenly the blue will not seem so dark, more like the color of a noon-bright sky. He brings the sun.

simon: that's disgusting! me: what's disgusting? simon: you know. you put your thing in the place where he, um, defecates.

As if when someone close to us dies, we momentarily trade places with them, in the moment right before. And as we get over it, we’re really living their life in reverse, from death to life, from sickness to health.