The book that made me want to be a writer in the first place was Gone with the Wind - I read it and wanted to create a whole world out of words, too.

And just like that, something inside shifted very subtly, so that all the empty spaces in him suddenly disappeared, so that his breath timed to hers, so that his blood sang. This is why there was music, he realized. There were some feelings that just didn’t have words big enough to describe them.

Sometimes there aren't words. The silence between us is flung wide as an ocean. But I manage to reach across it, to wrap my arms around him.

Life sometimes gets so bogged down in the details, you forget you are living it. There is always another appointment to be met, another bill to pay, another symptom presenting, another uneventful day to be notched onto the wooden wall. We have synchronized our watches, studied our calendars, existed in minutes, and completely forgotten to step back and see what we've accomplished.

Forgiveness is spiritual. Punishment is legal," Leo says. "They're not mutually exclusive.

I'm weird. Everyone says so.

Until this moment, I had not realized that someone could break your heart twice, along the very same fault lines.