For a split second, he had looked almost like my Alex again.

This is the past: It drifts, it gathers. If you are not careful, it will bury you.

That's the thing about faith. It works.

I used to think that's what love was: knowing someone so well he was like a part of you.

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.

Things change after you die, though, I guess because dying is the loneliest thing you can do.

This was what being cured was like: like being in a fishbowl, circling always inside the same glass.