sever

I 'd never seen him cry

I had to sever my emotional cord to escape the anger and shame that silently slithered through my head, disconnecting myself from the stares and whispers that followed me down the hall.

He looks at me, and I don't know what he sees. I used to think it was Rose. But she's not here with us now, in this room. It's just him and me, and the books. I feel like our lives are in those books. I feel like all the words on the pages are for us.

It's quiet for a while, and then Rowan says; "We could talk now. We're alone out here. No walls.""There are always walls." I say.

I don't dare touch her. Loss is a knowledge I'm sorry to have. Perhaps the only thing worse than experiencing it, is watching it replay anew in someone else--all the awful stages picking up like a chorus that has to be sung.

As much as I had always longed to be freed of my duties and obligations, being released from such bonds was as much a severing as an emancipation.

He had wished me well in finding my own fate to follow, and I never doubted his sincerity. But it had taken me years to accept that his absence in my life was a deliberate finality, an act he had chosen, a thing completed even as some part of my soul still dangled, waiting for his return. That, I think, is the shock of any relationship ending. It is realizing that what is still an ongoing relationship to someone is, for the other person, something finished and done with.

When we're alive, life consumes us. But when we die, all of the color and the motion is gone so quickly, it's as though it can no longer stand to be wasted on us.

Set fire to the broken pieces

Vaughn is talking about the heat, and his voice is so excited that it breaks into whispers at times. He loves his madness the way a bird loves the sky.

His lips are familiar. I know the shape of them, know how to make mine fit against them. His taste is familiar too. For all the illusions and colors and sweet smells... he has always tasted like skin. His breaths are shallow. I'm holding his life against my tongue, between my rows of teeth. He's offering it up.