He's looking at me as if the whole world waits for my next breath, with an intensity that makes my heart pound and my palms sweat and then he smiles, a sweet curve of his mouth, and my breath catches, but then I freeze because there is something about it, something beyond it that I know, that makes my mind go blank with fear and pain.

I didn't feel anything watching him go. I didn't even wish I did.

Things end. People leave. And you know what? Life goes on. Besides, if bad things didn't happen, how would you be able to feel the good ones?

Why do people think being with someone is the answer to everything?

It could be enough, maybe, or at least a start, but the problem is that at night I tumble into dreams that aren't dreams at all. I tumble into memories and wake up aching for a dying world and a quiet, cold life that offered me nothing but sitting in a still room.

I’m broken, I have cut myself wide open. I can see my heart and it is not what I believed it was, it is not good and kind and all the things I have always thought I am.

Little Alice, all hollowed out, so easy to smash into a million little pieces.