Girl in Snow

Nostalgia is my favorite emotion. It's like, you think you know how to deal with the passage of time, but nostalgia will prove you wrong. You'll press your face into an old sweatshirt, or you'll look at a familiar shade of paint on a front door, and you'll be reminded of all the time that got away from you. If you could live it all again, you'd take a long moment to look around, to examine knees against knees. Nostalgia puts you in this dangerous re-creation of something you can never have again. It's ruthless, and for the most part, inaccurate.

On his wedding night, Russ thought of Lee Whitley in the way you think of someone dead. Fondly, too fondly, until absence takes this fondness and multiplies it, stretching until it becomes something invasive. Until it swallows you whole.

Lucinda was dead, and the reminder slapped him constantly, freezing ocean waves against his thighs. He could only wade deeper. Deeper, until the truth bubbled into his mouth, salty, miserable. Deeper, until it was pointless to search for shorelines because he knew Lucinda would not be standing on them.

You can only see fifty-nine percent of the moon from the earth's surface. No matter where you go, in the entire world, you'll only ever see the same face. That fifty-nine percent." "Why are you telling me this?" "I'm just saying. We know this fact, but it doesn't stop us from staring.

Usually, I avoid mirrors. But today I'm hoping that the sight of my own body will help me place myself in the newly shifted universe.

Emotions shouldn't have names. I don't know why we bother talking about them, because emotions are never what they're supposed to be.

Ivan stands in the kitchen, watching them sleep, and Russ sits in his car, watching Ivan. Russ wonders if maybe Ivan too-so strong, so sure of himself-feels like a millisecond in the middle of an infinite, stretching night. Puny, fleeting. Lost to the dark.

I don't understand how you draw from memory, Mom had said once, as Cameron spread his art supplies across the living-room floor. He'd been working on a portrait of a dancer. How do you hold on to all of the details? Cameron had shrugged and said, I guess I can't figure out how to lose them.

They whispered things Cameron could not hear. It occurred to him how you could watch people all their lives. You could watch them sing along to music, but you'd never hear what song. You could watch them drink cups of tea before bed, but you'd never know that bitterness on their tongue. You could watch them talk on the phone, but they could be in love with the person on the other end of the line. Sight was useful, and also beautiful, but it was not necessarily the truth.

For the first time, my future is manifest, material-hovering just feet away from me, in the hands of a boy who barely understands he holds it. I could reach out and touch it.