Every experience, good or bad, is a priceless collector's item.

Everything you see, you might be seeing for the last time.

The world that birthed that story is long gone, all its people are dead, but it continues to touch the present and future because someone cared enough about that world to keep it. To put it in words. To remember it.

I wince at her use of the word "human." I've never liked that differentiation. She is living and I'm dead, but we're both human. Call me an idealist.

We eat and sleep and shuffle through the fog, walking a marathon with no finish line, no medals, no cheering.

I'm watching her talk. Watching her jaw move and collecting her words one by one as they spill from her lips. I don't deserve them. Her warm memories. I'd like to paint them over the bare plaster walls of my soul, but everything I paint seems to peel.

It was fun, but it's over now. This is how things go.