She Was Alive, And They

The Path Of Your Life Can Change In An Instant.

She Got Under The Covers And Put Her Arms Around The Bag. She Could Smell Tibby. It Used To Be She Couldn't Smell Tibby's Smell In The Way You Couldn't Smell Your Own; It Was Too Familiar. But Tonight She Could. This Was Some Living Part Of Tibby Still Here And She Held On To It. There Was More Of Tibby With Her Here And Now Than In What She Had Seen In The Cold Basement Room That Day.

The Most Haunting Thing Was Not That He Didn't Love Her Anymore. She Could Have Accepted That Eventually. The Most Haunting Thing Was That He Did. He Loved Her From Afar. He Loved Her In A Way That Was Preserved In Time, That Couldn't Be Sullied. And She Tended It In Her Careful, Curatorial Way.

I Hated Motorcycles. I Said To My Mother, 'i'll Never Get A Motorcycle.' And She Said, 'you Never Know What You'll Want When You Are Older.' After That, The Thing That Scared Me Was Not So Much The Motorcycle Itself, But That I Could Turn Into A Person Who Would Want One. I Was Scared Of The Idea That I Could Become An Entirely Different Person, A Stranger To Myself.

I'm Not Going Anywhere Without You. We're Swimming To China Together. And If The Worst Happens, I'm Dying With You Before I'm Living Without You.