There are some losses we never get over.

How can someone have the power to shatter you to dust--and also to make you feel so whole?

Mary bring out your umbrella - The sun shines down on this fine, fine day But the ashes raining down forever Are going to turn your hair to gray. Mary keep your oars a-steady Sail away on the rising flood Keep your candle at the ready Red tides can't be told from blood. - "Miss Mary" (a common child's clapping game, dating from the time of the blitz), from Pattycake and Beyond: A History of Play

They’d already taken her from me once. I didn’t want to lose her again.

And there it is: Even though we’re standing in the same patch of sun-drenched pavement, we might as well be a hundred thousand miles apart.

Time and space recede and blast away like a universe expanding forever outward, and leaving only darkness and the two of us on its periphery, darkness and breathing and touch.

"Everyone is asleep. They've all been asleep for years. You seemed... awake." Alex is whispering now. He closes his eyes, opens them again. "I'm tired of sleeping."