It's the way he says my name: like music.

The Story of Solomon is the only way I know how to explain. And then, in smaller letters: Forgive me.

Someday she will be saved, and the past and all its pain will be rendered as smoothly palatable as the food we spoon to our babies.

He is no longer mine to lose, but the grief is there, a gnawing sense of disbelief.

We should be protected from the people who will leave us in the end, from all the people who will disappear or forget us.

Everything I see and touch reminds me of him, and so everything I see and touch is perfect.

I'm gone, lost, floating away into nothingness like I am in my dream, but this time it's a good feeling - like soaring, like being totally free, and I can feel the impression of his fingers everywhere that they touch, and I think of stars streaking through the sky and leaving burning trails behind them, and in that moment - however long it lasts, seconds, minutes, days - while he's saying my name into my mouth and I'm breathing into him, I realize this, right here, is the first and only time I've ever been kissed in my life.