“She once told me that she loved me because I was the only thing she could hear. She can feel the vibration of the strings through the carved vessel of her instrument, but I am inside her. I am a song soaked into each bone of her secret body where the world has not been able to wander.”

“She once told me how she could feel the missing part of her arm- how she sometimes experienced the sensation of a hand- that it is possible to feel something without its physical presence.Perhaps love is like this and we are all limbs of one giant intangible body.”

“I didn’t know who she was, but I had this fire inside me for someone I knew existed.”

“That night she admitted her compulsion to escape. She was worried that if my father drowned, or I disappeared, she would be left with nothing. By running away at least she would have the joy of knowing she was missed.”

“She told me that while my father’s body might be crushed under tons of black earth, the body is nothing but camouflage. She whispered that every soul is a river trying to find its way back to the sea.”

“It had rained, she said, and I imagined the beads of small water on the windshield like a thousand eyes, or each drop a small imperfect reflection of a perfect moment.”

“I want to feel it somehow happened like that because things happen for a reason. I want to believe this more than anything because if it were just an accident, then God must have died before he could finish the world.”