The magic of someone new never lasts long enough. We only want those we can't have. It's those we lost or who never knew we existed who leave their mark. The others barely echo.

And then it hits me: I've lost you. You now rank among the things I'll always regret: opportunities lost, children never had, things I might have accomplished or done far better, lovers who have come and gone.

Sick and twisted.""Sick and twisted and very, very sad.""I've never seen you like this.""I want Billowy too. And the espadrilles. And the sunglasses. And you.

Now, how far away did Abingdon Square feel, as though it and she and the restaurant, and Maria Malibran, and the sudden false rainfall by the flickering lights of the Miramar hotel sign belonged to another life, a life unlived, a life I knew had turned its back to me and was being nailed to the wall.

Don't let me lose him.

In the weeks we'd been thrown together that summer, our lives had scarcely touched, but we had crossed to the other bank, where time stops and heaven reaches down to earth and gives us that ration of what is from birth divinely ours. We looked the other way. We spoke about everything but. But we've always known, and not saying anything now confirmed it all the more. We had found the stars, you and I. And this is given once only.

You are the only person I'd like to say goodbye to when I die, because only then will this thing I call my life make any sense. And if I should hear that you died, my life as you know it, the me who is speaking with you now, will cease to exist.