That's the thing: We didn't really care. A world without love is also a world without stakes.

It's like a razor blade edging its way through my organs, shredding me, all I can think is: It will kill me, it will kill me, it will kill me. And I don't care.

My heart is fluid and soaring. There's no longer any space between heartbeats.

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.

Something must die so that others can live.

Until, one day, she wasn’t.

It's amazing how close I have been, all this time, to my old life. And yet the distance that divides me from it is vast.