Do you really like studying?" Mattia nodded. "Why?" "It's the only thing I know how to do," he said shortly. He wanted to tell her that he liked studying because you can do it alone, because all the things you study are already dead, cold, and chewed over. He wanted to tell her that the pages of the schoolbooks were all the same temperature, that they left you time to choose, that they never hurt you and you couldn't hurt them either. But he said nothing.

Separating them were two layers of brick, a few inches of plaster, and nine years of silence.

Choices are made in brief seconds and paid for in the time that remains

She was tired, with that tiredness that only emptiness brings.

but his eyes were too dark for her to make out any spark in them

Mattia was right: the days had slipped over her skin like a solvent, one after the other, each removing a very thin layer of pigment from her tattoo, and from both of their memories. The outlines, like the circumstances, were still there, black and well delineated, but the colors had merged together until they faded into a dull, uniform tonality, a neutral absence of meaning.

The love of those we don't love in return settles on the surface and from there quickly evaporates.