“It’s a strange feeling, I thought, like my bones are walking along with me on the outside of my body.”

“These branches will be my bones, I thought, and the paper will be my heart and skin, the places that feel everything.”

“And it is strange that absence can feel like presence.”

“For one entire day I let his kiss burn on my cheek and into my blood and I don't push the memory away... This kiss, these words, they feel like beginning.”

“A little surge of bitterness goes through me like someone's shot it right into my veins with a syringe. But I know how to get over the feeling: remember that it doesn't do any good.”

“I love you."lightning. Once it has forked, hot-white, from sky to earth, there is no going back.It's time. I feel it, I know it. My eyes on him, his on me, and both of us breathing, watching, tired of of waiting. Ky close his eyes, but mine are still open. what will it feel like, his lips on mine? Like a secret told, a promise kept? Like that line in the poem-a shower of all my days- silvery rain falling all around me, where the lighting meets the earth? The whistle blows below us and the moment breaks. We are safe.For now.”

“Cassia.I know which life is my real one now, no matter what happens. It’s the one with you. For some reason, knowing that even one person knows my story makes things different. Maybe it’s like the poem says. Maybe this is my way of not going gentle.I love you. (Ky Markham)”