When I looked in the mirror today, I saw a stranger. The woman staring back at me as unblinkingly confident. She had found her centre. Her eyes were calm and did not brim over with the saltiness of the soul that often anymore. She was at peace. I was at peace.

All I had was a wary belief that there were more things in heaven and earth, as the Bard said, that one could explain. And perhaps we were not meant to explain these, perhaps we were only meant toexperience these, live through them, and emerge, bearing on our bodies and our souls the carbuncles of the lived experience,now fastened onto our selves.

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.

...realising that all the time he had been hunting for Aisha in her, and found nothing but the warmth of another body and the chill of a soul he couldn’t touch.