and I've always known it, the way I love a song I hear for the first time, even before I know all the words, the way I love my favorite color, and the way that the train would speed past my bedroom when it was very quiet and I'd feel it in my stomach rushing through me. I love you in a way that I've never felt needed to be said.

I've loved you since the day I stole the atlas for you," Gabriel says, because he thinks I'm asleep.

...maybe hope isn't such a bad thing. Maybe it's what keeps us together.

Love is not enough to keep any of us alive.

A strange thing, words. Once they're said, it's hard to imagine they're untrue.

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

I shake my head, watching snow tumble and swirl from an all-white sky. The world seems so clean if you only look up