“She wonders if you can feel nostalgic for something before it's in the past, she wonders if perhaps her vocabulary is too small or if her chemical intake has corroded it and the music goes doowoah doowoah.”

“They haven't spoken about it, they haven't said what will we do when we leave here, do you want to come with me, let's work something out, and she knows that this means they will quickly and easily drift apart, into other people's lives, into other people's arms in rooms like this. She is surprised that this doesn't make her feel sad. She listens to the music, she looks around at the things people dropped when they fell asleep or went out of the room, she kisses the boy's arm again and she feels only a kind of sweet nostalgia. She wonders if you can feel nostalgic for something before it's in the past, she wonders if perhaps her vocabulary is too small or if her chemical intake has corroded it and the music goes doowah doowah doowah.”

“She feels bruised by her reading and by life too. She wonders, does she always fight her books before yielding to them?”

“There's a kind of unfamiliar electricity that goes through her at the nearness of him, and she can't help wondering if he feels it, too.”

“And with a last stardrop, a last circle, I arrive, and she's there, chemical wonder in her eyes.”

“Her skin is slowly peeled from her body. She knows something low and guttural must be coming out of her mouth, She can feel it ripping its way out of her lungs and past her throat. But she can't hear it because there is a roar in her veins like a hurricane. A bright, pure light pierces her, fixes her on a single point of space and time, and she is screaming still, though not from pain, but from fear and wonder. Like she's just been born.”