“He had seen me several times, and had intended to call on me long before, but a peculiar combination of circumstances had prevented it.”

“Forgive me," he went on. "For a long time I have had the peculiar habit of not arriving but appearing.”

“For I knew already that something had taken me from me, and had replaced it with a desperate longing for a time before; a time before fear; a time before shame. And now that knowledge had a voice that rose from the depths of my years and howled into the night sky like a wounded animal longing for home.”

“It was a nasty look. It made me feel as if I were something the dog had brought in and intended to bury later on, when he had time.”

“The whole time, I’d never seen, all you had spread before me. The whole time, I’d never seen, all I need was inside me. Now, I feel so different.”

“It was as if he had known her for a long, long time and before he knew her, he knew nothing because he felt he had not existed then, life had been absent in his breaths.”