I am intrigued. I am fearless.

This is my story. These things are my past, and I will not allow them to be washed away. I will find a way to have them back.

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.

I hold on because you never know in this place when something good will be taken away.

He kissed back, all the pages spread out around us like riddles waiting to be solved. Let them wait. Let my genes unravel, my hinges come loose. If my fate rests in the hands of a madman, let death come and bring its worse. I'll take the ruined craters of laboratories, the dead trees, this city with ashes in the oxygen, if it means freedom. I'd sooner die here than live a hundred years with wires in my veins.

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.

Don't forget how you got here. Don't Forget.

I rip my handout of hers, and I want to back away. I want to get as far from her as I can, but for some reason I can't move from this spot."What else did you tell him?