“For a second I was almost jealous of the clouds. Why was he looking to them for an escape when I was right here beside him?”

“Why didn’t you stay?’ she has whispered against the unyielding stone. Why didn’t you stay? She pressed the berry against her lips. Why didn’t I ask you just one more time to stay.”

“When you can be this, why are you ever anything else? - Broken Verses”

“Why do you have to be so annoying sometimes?""Cant help it. It's the company I keep.”

“Sitting on the divan, she touched a finger to the bullet wound in his chest. It seemed so small, so incapable of creating the exodus of blood which had drenched his clothes and skin as he lay in the hospital, waiting for her to claim him. Death has been instantaneous, they said, as if there were a relief in that. She did not want death to have been instantaneous; she wanted to have at least held his hand as he lay dying and said goodbye to him in terms other than the, ‘Why are you doing again? You’ll find nothing. Stay. Oh all right, go,’ that had been her farewell to him that morning. Stay. Stay. Stay. She should have repeated it like a madwoman, banged her head against the wall in a frenzy, hit him and wept. She should have said it just one more time, just a little more forcefully. She should have taken his dear, sweet head in her hands and kissed his eyes and forehead. Stay.”

“Don't you know how much I hero-worshiped you when I was a kid? Youwere Marie Curie crossed with Emily Bronte crossed with Joan of Arc tome when I was ten. And when i told you that, you said my culturalreferences were the sign of a colonized mind.”

“How horrifying that morning when you wake up and your first thought is not of the person who has left. That’s when you know, I will never die of a broken heart.”