“I stand entwined in fire on the inextinguishable bonfire of inconceivable love.”

“This is love, to sit with someone you've known forever in a place you've been meaning to go, and watching as their life happens to them until you stand up and it's time to go.”

“She’s so, everybody’s so stupid, you know? Christian too, Todd, whoever says stupid things, you’re from different worlds, like you dropped here in a spaceship.”I had to say something. “Yeah,” I said. “So—?”“So they can fuck themselves,” you said. “I don’t care, you know?”I felt a smile on my face, tears too.“Because Min, I know, OK? I’m stupid I know, about faggy movies, sorry, fuck, I’m stupid about that too. No offense. Ha! But I want to do it, Min.Any party you want, anything, not go to bonfires. Whatever you want to do, for the eighty-ninth birthday, even though I can’t remember the name.”“Lottie Carson.” I stepped close to you, but you held your hands out, you weren’t done.“And they’ll say things, right? I know they will, of course they will. Your friends are, probably, too, right?”“Yes,” I said. I felt furious, or furiously something, pacing with you and waiting to fall into your moving arms.“Yes,” you said, with a huge grin. “Let’s stay together, I want to be with you. Let’s. Yes?”“Yes.”“Because I don’t care, virginity, different, arty, weird parties with bad cake, that igloo. Just together, Min.”“Yes.”“Like everyone is telling us not to be.”“Yes!”“Because Min, listen, I love you.”I gaped.“Don’t, you don’t have to—I know it’s crazy, Joan says I’ve really lost it, but—”“I love you too,” I said.”

“This is another thing I think of, turning it over, try to put together two pictures of it, but this time it's about me, it's myself I'm trying to figure. Because one sounds so disgusting, not even able to tell Al about it, win the big game, take the virgin to her first bonfire, feed her a beer or two, and then the two of us in someone's car with your hand between my legs, unbuttoned and hiked down and the noises I made, before I finally, gasping, stopped you. It sounds terrible and it's probably the truth, the real picture, gross when I write it down and shamed about it. But it's the real, whole truth I'm trying to get down, how it happened, and honestly it felt different then, different from that bad picture. I can see it, so gentle the way you moved, the thrill that was there with us as no one knew where we were or what we were doing.”

“...that's not why we broke up. I love it, I miss it, I hate to give it back to you, this complicated thing, it's why we stayed together”

“The matches were a little 'he loves me, he loves me not,' but then I saw right on the box that I had twenty-four, which would end the game at not, so I just let the small handful sparkle and puff a bit, each one a thrill, a tiny delicious jolt for each part I remembered, until I burned my finger and went back in still thinking of all we did together.”

“because damn it Ed, that’s not why we broke up. I love it, I miss it, I hate to give it back to you, this complicated thing, it’s why we stayed together.”