anything, anything is possible, if you can just see the sky.

Everywhere he touches is fire. My whole body is burning up, the two of us becoming twin points of the same bright white flame.

If singing were a feeling it would be this, this light, this lifting, like laughing.

I know the rules. I've been living here longer than you have." He cracks a smile then. He nudges me back. "Hardly." "Born and raised. You're a transplant." I nudge him again, a little harder, and he laughs and tries to catch hold of my arm. I squirm away, giggling, and he stretches out to tickle my stomach. "Country bumpkin!" I squeal, as he grabs out and wrestles me back onto the blanket, laughing. "City slicker," he says, rolling over on top of me, and then kisses me. Everything dissolves: heat, explosions of color, floating.

I think of Grace and feel a sharp pain in my chest.

Fear. Blame. Don't forget. Mom. I love you. -Lauren Oliver, Delerium

I cry for everything I abandoned and because I, too, have been left behind -- by Alex, by my mom, by time that has cut through our worlds and separated us.