What else is life from the time you were born but a struggle to matter, at least to someone?

You don't need to be seeing someone to be in love with her. You can have lost touch with her, she can have hurt you, even inexplicably. If you ever felt that you really knew her and that it was what you knew that you loved, and if you remember what it was you once knew, why is it so crazy to retain that love still?

Listen- all that she was then, all that she is now, those gestures, everything I remember but won't or can't articulate anymore, the perfect words that are somehow made imperfect when used to describe her and all that should remain unsaid about her- it is all unsupported by reason. I know that. But that enigmatic calm that attaches itself to people in the presence of reason- it's something from which I haven't been able to take comfort, not reliably, not since her.

What else is life from the time you were born but a struggle to matter, at least to someone?

I used to be a child. It came naturally to me. I was an adult for a time, too. That came less naturally.

I hold him to my chest. My love for him is the only unequivocally good thing I know is always there inside of me. It is the reason I should be spared all that is coming, the only reason.

It's like the smell of burned toast. You made the toast. You looked forward to it. You even enjoyed making it, but it burned. What were you doing? Was it your fault? It doesn't matter anymore. You open the window, but only the very top layer of the smell goes away. The rest remains around you. It's the walls. You leave the room, but it's on your clothes. You change your clothes, but it's in your hair. It's on the thin skin on the tops of your hand. And in the morning, it's still there.