When we move apart, she looks at me again, till a small tear lifts itself up in her eye. It trips out to find a wrinkle and follows it down.

Sometimes I just survive. But sometimes I stand on the rooftop of my existence, arms stretched out, begging for more.

That was when the world wasn't so big and I could see everywhere. It was when my father was a hero and not a human.

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.

One was a book thief. The other stole the sky.

You can't eat books, sweetheart.

So I saw that there was only me. There was only me who could worry about what was happening here, inside these walls of my life. Other people had their own worlds to worry about, and in the end, they had to fend for themselves, just like us.