This wasn’t just lust or infatuation, this was intoxication, a craven’s craving I could not explain. But then, what was love but a want of the flesh, or a want of the soul. I wanted this man. I couldn’t not want him. I couldn’t not breathe. I wanted him in a way that was so absolute I couldn’t care if he didn’t want me back the same way.

And I would let him go and let him return. Over and over again, until there were no spaces between him going and returning and the rhythm of our coming together and separating made a music all its own that would fill through my days of waiting.

I was carried along by his optimism. Or perhaps I was carried along by him. It is dangerous to be carried along by a person. People change.

We could love, I realized, without the promise of exclusivity that one had been raised on. And there was no shame or guilt in that, it was just the way the human heart was, four-chambered, with an infinite capacity to contain others, more than it could contain itself.

Perhaps there was nothing to be said, and there was nothing to be heard. Perhaps all we were destined to be were moths to the flame, burn ourselves out in the pursuit of the next light we saw. This light had burnt me out. And all I could do was wait till I rose, phoenix-like, only to be burnt again.

She had not realised it at that time, but when she had stated she would follow this man to the ends of the earth, he’d made her follow through on the statement.

Love is a country where you leave the passports of rationality at the customs when you enter, to be collected when you exit.

Infidelity, he now realised, had nothing to do with the lack of love, and everything to do with the lack of respect.

Wasn't hate merely love flipped over onto its back, kicking and squealing for attention, the angst of unrequited emotion that would not be denied?