I wish I could close my eyes and be blown into dust and nothingness, feel all my thoughts disperse like dandelion fluff drifting off on the wind. But his hands keep pulling me back: into the alley, and Portland, and a world that has suddenly stopped making sense.

When you love someone, when you care for someone, you have to do it through the good and the bad. Not just when you're happy and it's easy.

I'll find you," he says, watching me with the eyes I remember. "I won't let you go again

Quiet through the grave go I; or else beneath the graves I lie

I know some of you are Thinking maybe I deserved it. But before you start pointing Fringers, let me ask you Is what I did really so bad? So bad I deserved to die? So bad I deserved to die like that? Is what I did really much worse Then what anybody else does? Is it really so much worse Than what you do?

I reach out and grab her wrist. It feels impossibly tiny in my hand, like this one time I found a baby bird near goose Point, and I picked it up and it died there, taking its final gasping fluttering breaths in my palm.

The salt blowing off the sea makes the air feel textured and heavy.