People die, I think, but your relationship with them doesn't. It continues and is ever-changing.

He smiles and takes his index finger and presses it to my lips, leaves it there until my heart lands on Jupiter: three seconds, then removes it, and heads back into the living room. Whoa - well, that was either the dorkiest or sexiest moment of my life, and I'm voting for sexy on account of my standing here dumbstruck and giddy, wondering if he did kiss me after all.

I heard this expression once: Each time someone dies, a library burns. I'm watching it burn right to the ground.

What kind of world is this? And what do you do about it? What do you do when the worst thing that can happen actually happens?

This is the secret I kept from you, Bails, from myself too: I think I liked that Mom was gone, that she could be anybody, anywhere, doing anything. I liked that she was our invention, a woman living on the last page of the story with only what we imagined spread out before her. I liked that she was ours, alone.

Music: what life, what living itself sounds like.

The sky is everywhere, it begins at your feet.