No matter how many times she was told that she was loved, there was no recognition that the proof was in the abandonment.

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.

A human doesn't have a heart like mine. The human heart is a line, whereas my own is a circle, and I have the endless ability to be in the right place at the right time. The consequence of this is that I'm always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both. Still, they have one thing I envy. Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die.

Disbelief held me down inside my footsteps, making my body heavy but my heart wild.

Make no mistake, the woman had a heart. She had a bigger one that people would think. There was a lot in it, stored up, high in miles of hidden shelving. Remember that she was the woman with the instrument strapped to her body in the long, moon-slit night.

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

You don't shoot a dog when it is already dead.