“And the blood pulses hard, too hard, and some sweet internal assailant comes and quickly shreds the muscles of her shoulders and neck, and soon everything will fall and dissipate, nose and ears and the three gray cells she has left, and with all her strength she tries to calm down, she must stop this, but she is unable to give up these heartbeats, the forgotten precise heartbeats which reply as an echo, and she remembers his hand upon the tablets of her heart, her hand on his chest--feel it, our prisoners are corresponding. But how? She is amazed. How did I let Shaul lead me on like this? Where have I been all evening? But she knows exactly how and where, what she was listening to and what her heart went out to. Look at you, she sighs. No, really, look at you, you and your reaching heart.”

“Everything stops in her and sinks into silence. She drives slowly, foggy pictures painted in her mind. She has to open a window, but how will she withstand the rush of air? She can hardly breathe. She is frozen around a fragment embedded inside her. Only her heart is suddenly full of life, the only part of her that beats in excitement and goes out to Shaul, goes out limping, goes out hunchbacked, with Band-Aids stuck all over it, but goes out.”

“She had not known how to tell him that his loving whispers were always in her ears, like a story she’d been told, the story of a thing she did not deserve. But he understood. He called those thoughts “the baby teeth of a snake,” and swore he would rip them out of her, and pledged to prove to her that the opposite was true. And he didn’t even have to explain to her what he meant by “the opposite”; she knew it was the opposite of her.”

“she poured herself into him wordlessly. Unable to stop, she emptied her very core into him, and yelled and sobbed and laughed and promised and begged, and explained why and why not, and why they must and why they couldn’t, and why there was no life without and how everything is always ripped in the same place and how she curses the moment and is resurrected over and over again endlessly.”

“How could she be feeling the very same streams that rushed around within him? She thought, as they overflowed and lapped inside her too. She had never felt the inside of another person this way.”

“Something has fallen asleep there, that's all, but it's warm, and it's hers, it's the pain imprinted on her, and his healing powers rise up. It's her with everything she now is.”

“Are you a virgin?” I asked, “A virgin who’s gonna tear out my heart?”“Yes … no … wait.” She looked at me. “I’m not going to rip out your heart.”“Thanks for clearing that up,” I said“Is that okay with you?” she asked softly.“Okay with me?”,“No, it’s not okay at all,” I replied.“Why not?” She looked down at her toes.“I want you to rip out my heart.”She smiled, pressed her hand to my chest, and said, “I could never do that.”You already have, I thought as I took her hand in mine”