All I need is a badly mangled, irate sentence stalking me.

I was a twenty-two-year-old single white female alone in a strange country where my sister had been killed.

And there you have it...if I knew that I could only have a few nights in that man's arms or nothing, I would take those magic nights and use them to keep me warm for the rest of my life.

Sometimes my dreams feel so real it's hard to believe they're just the subconscious's stroll across a whimsical map that has no true north.

There are moments in my life when I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, doing exactly what I’m supposed to do. I pay attention to them. They’re my cosmic landmarks, letting me know I’m on the right path. Now that I’m older and can look back and see where I missed a turn here and there, and know the price I paid for those oversights, I try to look sharper at the present.

On the lips of my enemy, my sister’s lover, my lover’s killer, I taste the punishment I deserve. I taste oblivion.

Fire to my ice. Ice to my fever.