“My heart is fluid and soaring. There's no longer any space between heartbeats.”

“Time becomes a stutter-the space between drumbeats, splintered into fragments, and also endlessly long, as long as soaring guitar notes that melt into one another, as full as the dark mass of bodies around me. I feel like the air downstairs has gone to liquid, to sweat and smell and sound, and I have broken apart in it. I am wave: I am pulled into the everything. I am energy and noise and a heartbeat going boom, boom, boom, echoing the drums.”

“Standing there in-between two disgusting Dumpsters in some crappy alleywith the whole world crumbling down around me, and hearing Alex say thosewords, all the fear I have carried with me since I learned to sit, stand, breathe—since I was told that at the very heart of me was something wrong, somethingrotten and diseased, something to be suppressed—since I was told that I wasalways just a heartbeat away from being damaged—all of it vanishes at once.That thing—the heart of hearts of me, the core of my core—stretches and unfurlseven further, soaring like a flag: making me feel stronger than I ever have before.”

“There is a vast world for us, a boundless space beyond and between the fences and the rules. We will travel it freely. We will be okay.”

“Would you like to?” he says. His voice is hardly audible above the wind—so low it’s barely a whisper.“Would I like to what?” My heart is roaring, rushing in my ears, and thoughthere are still several inches between his hand and mine, there’s a zipping,humming energy that connects us, and from the heat flooding my body youwould think we were pressed together, palm to palm, face to face.“Dance,” he says, at the same time closing those last few inches and findingmy hand and pulling me closer, and at that second the song hits a high note and Iconfuse the two impressions, of his hand and the soaring, the lifting of the music.We dance.”

“That's my favorite thing about him. I like to lie next to him when it's late, dark, and so quiet I can hear my own heartbeat. It's times like that when I'm sure that I'm in love.”

“And then, just at that moment, when I'm no longer sure if I'm dreaming or awake or walking some valley in between where everything you wish for comes true, I feel the flutter of his lips on mine.”