Everything looks stark and vivid and frozen, as though drawn precisely and outlined in ink - parents' smiles frozen, camera flashes blinding, mouths open and white teeth glinstening, dark glossy hair and deep blue sky and unrelenting light, everyone drowning in light - everything so clear and perfect I'm sure it must already be a memory, or a dream.

This is what I want. This is the only thing I've ever wanted. Everything else—every single second of every single day that has come before this very moment, this kiss—has meant nothing.

We are all punished for the lives we have chosen, in one way or another.

I love you. Remember. And someday, I will find you again.

Every choice is limited. That's life.

Maybe it would be better if we didn't love. If we didn't lose, either. If we didn't get out hearts stomped on, shattered; if we didn't have to patch and repatch it until we're like Frankenstein monsters, all sewn together by who knows what

I feel a flash of grief so intense it almost makes me cry out: not for what I lost, but for the chances I missed.