This is a difference between us: you desire what other people have, while I desire the things I used to have, or think I might have one day.

I am breathing. In dreams, we never bother to breathe.

Such a strange thing, to hold a six-year-old's hand. Especially a six-year-old you've only just met. A toddler will grab hold of your finger, and someone your own age will clasp on to your whole hand, but with six-year-olds it's something in between, this acknowledgment that they can't be the one to take hold, so you have to do all the holding, folding your hand around theirs, feeling so much bigger and responsible.

I only have eyes for you.

When we’re alone together, I’m the destination. When I’m here in her life at school, I’m the disruption.

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

I wish I could remember the moment when I was a kid and I discovered that the letters linked into words, and that the words linked to real things. What a revelation that must have been. We don't have the words for it, since we hadn't yet learned the words. It must have been astonishing, to be given the key to the kingdom and see it turn in our hands so easily.