I would gladly have climbed out of my skin and into his that night, because I believed that was what love meant.

Dogs are easy. If their tails are up and their eyes are soft, you're in.

A week passes but it feels as if he's never been anywhere else. It's one of the things war does to you. Everything you see works to replace moments and people from your life before, until you can't remember why any of it mattered. It doesn't help if you're a soldier. The effect is the same.

You are everything good and straight and fine and true—and I see that so clearly now, in the way you’ve carried yourself and listened to your own heart. You’ve changed me more than you know, and will always be a part of everything I am. That’s one thing I’ve learned from this. No one you love is ever truly lost.

But in the end, fighting for a love that was already gone felt like trying to live in the ruins of a lost city.

Not everyone out in a storm wants to be saved

Maybe happiness was an hourglass already running out, the grains tipping, sifting past each other. Maybe it was a state of mind.