“In his arms, I slowly unfolded like a love note read in secret.”

“I twisted my arm to curl him behind me and he unfolded there, the two of us snuggled like quotation marks in his room full of words.”

“... all his strength gathered in his hips and chest and his arms wrapped around me and his breath jabbed soft and hot in my ear and a note of tenderness was there at the end like a lovely curlicue and I liked him because there was no disguising the honest male gladness that went from his body out to mine.”

“The years stretched before her, a long and dusty way, yet if she could walk humbly along it she might find that life, unfolding slowly, keeps its best secrets till the end.”

“Time passes slowly. Nobody says a word, everyone lost in quiet reading. One person sits at a desk jotting down notes, but the rest are sitting there silently, not moving, totally absorbed. Just like me.”

“A note, who writes a note like that? Who were you to write one to me? it boomed inside me the whole time, an explosion over and over, the joy of what you wrote to me jumpy shrapnel in my bloodstream. I can't have it near me anymore, I'm grenading it back to you, as soon as I unfold it and read it and cry one more time. Because me too, and fuck you. Even now.”