It's not the place, I think. It's the people. We'd have all been the same anywhere else.

Together, they would watch everything that was so carefully planned collapse, and they would smile at the beauty of destruction.

in the trees this afternoon, he was a giver of bread and teddy bears.

It was a Monday and they walked on a tightrope to the sun.

Warily, she dares to allow me a smile. "It's okay. It's just...I'm not too good at talking to people." She looks away again as her shyness smothers her. "So, do you think it'd be all right if we don't talk?

The scrawled words of practice stood magnificently on the wall by the stairs, jagged and childlike and sweet. They looked on as both the hidden Jew and the girl slept, hand to shoulder. They breathed. German and Jewish lungs.

Even enemies were an inch away from friendship.