There was a desperate undercurrent to our marriage--a feeling of being in a dream from which I couldn't seem to awaken. A nagging sense that my life, laid out so neatly like the clothes Deirdre left on my divan, was no longer my own.

It was my fifth grade teacher who introduced the idea that writing could be more than a hobby for me.

Give me time" "For you, always.

It's quiet for a while, and then Rowan says; "We could talk now. We're alone out here. No walls." "There are always walls." I say.

Set fire to the broken pieces; start anew.

When we're alive, life consumes us. But when we die, all of the color and the motion is gone so quickly, it's as though it can no longer stand to be wasted on us.

I start trying to stay unconscious. The problem with this is that no amount of willpower can change the reality.