Sarah: "Not bad. You look almost human." Lena: "Thanks." Sarah: "I said almost." Lena: "Well, then, almost thanks.

people themselves are full of tunnels: winding, dark spaces and caverns; impossible to know all the places inside of them. Impossible even to imagine.

i think of all the thousands of billions of steps and missteps and chances and coincidences that have brought me here. Brought you here, and it feels like the biggest miracle in the world.

I still wanted to know why. As though somebody was going to answer that for me, as though any answer would be satisfying.

It's going to be okay. Words that mean nothing. really, just sounds intoned into vastness and darkness, little scrabbling attempts to latch on to something when we're falling.

Somewhere in the endless spinning of eternity that one, tiny, fraction of a second where our lips met is lost forever.

I have had to give up so much, so many selves and lives already. I have grown up and out of the rubble of my old lives, of things and people I have cared for.