Do you know how sometimes - when you are riding your bike and you start skidding across sand, or when you miss a step and start tumbling down the stairs - you have those long, long seconds to know that you are going to be hurt, and badly?

Grief is a curious thing, when it happens unexpectedly. It is a Band-Aid being ripped away, taking the top layer off a family. And the underbelly of a household is never pretty, ours no exception. There were times I stayed in my room for days on end with headphones on, if only so that I would not have to listen to my mother cry. There were the weeks that my father worked round-the-clock shifts, so that he wouldn't have to come home to a house that felt too big for us.

How can you be a survivor, when you can't even remember the war?

Violence up close has a smell. Like copper blood and charcoal burning.

Marina sighs. "Love's a tidal wave," she says. "Because it sweeps you off your feet?" I ask. "No. Because it sucks you under and you drown.

Coop kissed me deeply, drawing my breath from me in a long, sweet ribbon. "Perhaps I haven't mentioned it, but I'm an expert when it comes to first steps." Are you," I said. "Then tell me how." You close your eyes," Coop answered, "and jump.

I have only known her for two years. But if you took every memory, every moment, if you stretched them end to end-they'd reach forever.