“She felt like an amputee, reaching out reflexively with an arm she no longer had.”

“Once he had told her something that she could not imagine: that amputees suffer pains, cramps, itches, in the leg that is no longer there. That is how she felt without him, feeling his presence where he no longer was.”

“Amputees suffer pains, cramps, itches in the leg that is no longer there. That is how she felt without him, feeling his presence where he no longer was.”

“She had reached a turning point. She no longer believed that a situation could be made better by writing a poem about it.”

“She had suffered longer, and she had suffered more. Each second was agony in the first weeks. She was like an amputee in the days before anesthesia, half crazed with pain, astounded that the human body could feel so much and not die of it. But slowly, cell by painful cell, she began to mend. There came a time when it was no longer her whole body that burned with pain but only her heart. And then there came a time when even her heart was able, for a time at least, to feel other emotions besides grief... she learned how to exist apart.”

“She felt like she was walking up on a wounded animal, unsure if reaching out to him was going to win her a bit of uneasy trust or a vicious taste of fang and claw.”