What have you done? What have you given up?' So many things, Cecily. More than you know.

I wanted so badly to tell him, but something about that entire night seemed so beautiful, so bizarre, that I didn't trust it with my secrets.

There is no choice for him but to believe. He has nothing left to give in offering.

I like the idea of something greater than us. We destroy things with our curiosity. We shatter with our best intentions. We are no closer to perfection than we were one hundred years ago, or five hundred.

Even the human race can't claim to be natural anymore. We are fake, dying things. How fitting that I would end up in this sham of a marriage.

Suddenly the clouds seem high above us. They’re moving over us in an arch, circling the planet. They have seen abysmal oceans and charred, scorched islands. They have seen how we destroyed the world. If I could see everything, as the clouds do, would I swirl around this remaining continent, still so full of color and life and seasons, wanting to protect it? Or would I just laugh at the futility of it all, and meander onward, down the earth’s sloping atmosphere?

I don’t have too many books, I have too little shelving.