I said, I prefer the ocean when it's gray. Or not really gray. A pale, in-between color. It reminds me of waiting for something good to happen.

It's as though the words are trapped, buried under past fears, past lives, like fossils compressed under layers of dirt.

It is a ruined-world, a nonsense-place.

I remember Lena's expression when he knocked on the door; and how Alex had looked at her when she finally let him into the storeroom. I remember exactly what he was wearing, too, and the mess of his hair, the sneakers with their blue-tinged laces. His right shoe was untied. He didn't notice. He didn't notice anything but Lena.

In a world without love, this is what people are to each other: values, benefits, and liabilities, numbers and data. We weigh, we quantify, we measure, and the soul is ground to dust.

What glitters may not be gold; and even wolves may smile; and fools will be led by promises to their deaths.

And now I know why they invented words for love, why they had to: It's the only thing that can come close to describing what I feel in that moment, the baffling mixture of pain and pleasure and fear and joy, all running sharply through me at once.