“But for now, I just sat there on the bed and listened to my song. The one that had been written for me by a man who knew me not at all, now sung by the one who knew me best.”

“I always knew I'd be a sailor. In my cradle, playing with my toes, I knew it. What else could there have been? The sailors had made my blood move before I was born, I now believe. As my mother stood one night upon the shit-smelling Bermondsey shore with me in her belly, the sailors had sung out there across the great river, and their siren song had come to the shell-pink enormity that was my listening ear newly formed in the amniotic fluid.Or so I believe.”

“A great weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. Ben wasn’t what I wanted or needed. I wanted someone who knew me, the real me. I needed the person who knew all my secrets and fears. I wanted a person who lived and fought passionately. I wanted my best friend.”

“For a moment in time, a man knew me for who I was and, without reservation, loved me for who I was. How can I now live knowing no one will ever see me again in such a perfect light? Hear me as I wish to be heard? Love me as [he] loved me?”

“After that, I felt like I had two lives. There was the me I had been before the attack, the one people knew and wanted to relate to. The one people wanted to comfort and fix. And there was another me, a hidden me that no one ever saw. There was a me who had tasted death. That me knew things others people didn't know.”

“I wanted to be one of those people who have streaks to maintain, who scorch the ground with their intensity. But for now, at least I knew such people, and they needed me, just like comets need tails.”