The sullen boy sitting before me is not my husband, and the girl he is fretting over isn't me, will never be me.

Home?' I say. It's a word that can mean anywhere and nowhere.

Rhine. The river that, somewhere out there, has broken free.

He sits next to me, careful to avoid my hair that's splayed out around my head like blood. A bullet to the forehead, boom, blond waves everywhere.

Don't you miss it?" I say. "Being free." He laughs.

Love is not enough to keep any of us alive.

I want to make a world more magical than my own. I don't care if it makes sense, I don't care if it's ridiculed or if, rather than a neat round planet that goes around forever, it ends with a cliff that falls off into nothing. I want to have my eyes wide open, and I want to see this room and at the same time, not this room.