Gradually the feeling wears off, and I feel swamped again by the inexplicable pettiness of being alive.

I think I have fallen in love and I believe the woman in question, though she has not said so, returns my feelings. How can I be sure when she has said nothing? Is this youthful vanity? I wish in some ways that it were. But I am so convinced that I barely need question myself. This conviction brings me no joy.[…]I am driven by a greater force than I can resist. I believe that force has its own reason and its own morality even if they may never be clear to me while I am alive.

It's only after the change is fully formed that you can see what's happened.

You can't recall someone whose name has worn away.

Inhale and hold the evening in your lungs.

The thunder of false modesty was deafening.

I breathed and breathed and did feel some calmness enter in, though it was, as always, shot with a sense of loss. Loss and fear.