Surrender

I am dying: it's a beautiful word. Like the long slow sigh of the cello: dying. But the sound of it is the only beautiful thing about it.

I thought about how stupid it is, that all of us are born destined to desire somebody else, though desire brings with it such disappointment and pain. Humankind's history must be scored bloody with heartbreak. This hankering for affection is a blight upon us.

Life is lived on the inside. What's outside doesn't matter.

She doesn't understand that doors, walls, fences, ceilings - they're helpless to keep out what determinedly desires to get in.

Affection makes fools. Always, without exception, love digs a channel that's sooner or later flooded by the briny water of despair.

I suppose that's what happens when you make other people's lives miserable: life gets miserable back at you.

My life was pouring out my feet and seeping through cracks in the floor; yet still I knelt and did not move, for fear she'd let go my hands. Let me stay, I wanted to beg: Please don't make me go.

I would always be lonely, but no more alone.

There's fire in my fingers. I burn everything I touch.

I looked along the aisle and saw her, and it was as if I saw her for the first time. Everything changed. The ancient featureless interior of me spangled orange, mint, cat-blue. I looked back to the window immediately, my face damp, my breath caught. And worried I would never have the courage to look at her again.

We walked into the forests which encircled the town. I have never liked them, their dark throat, their sullen height, their slump-shouldered gloom. But Evangeline walked steadily into their maw, and I followed her. She wanted to see the swathes which, years ago, the firebug had burned. The furnaced forest was green again, though here and there stood leafless trunks cindered to the core; on the scruffy dirt lay stiff black limbs tangled in morning-glory. Evangeline touched her palm to the charcoal, murmured, 'Poor things.

Time crawled past on leaden hands and knees.

I am dying: it's a beautiful word. Like the long slow sigh of a cello: dying. But the sound of it is the only beautiful thing about it.

Yeah, reflections! The same, but different. Like twins - like blood brothers! And when you need something bad done, like punishment or revenge, you'll just ask me, and I will do it -

We both knew that what I said was the truth, as well as being a lie. The pure and honest answer was pinging between us, hovering above the weeds.

Every atom in me feels composed of lead. This is what dying is: a pull to the ground.

Some things about him are the same as ever. He still looks painfully angelic.

You always underestimated me. You thought you made me harmless when you gave angelhood to me. You forgot that some angels are warriors. Where there's warriors, there's war. I will fight to the death. It's my duty. I am not afraid.

Evangeline's obliviousness was a reason to like her rather than not: I liked least those schoolfellows whose awareness of me invariably caused misery.

A small town has as many eyes as a fly

I am Gabriel, the messenger, the teller of astonishing truths.

Goodbye, fin,' I say. And I wish I was going with him, to some warm sheltered hideaway in the hills, wish that I, too, could lie down beside the dog, feel his unbroken heartbeat, smell the dust in his fur. There's only hours. I steel my courage. Surrender.

A small town is nothing but eyes and gaping maw; it pecks at its own like a flock of vicious birds.

He is dirt under fingernails and the stick of sap on skin... I am saintly, poetic; I am demise, otherworld.

A tethered thing is a dead thing...

I felt dry as if someone had skinned me. I was not the bones and meat, but the cast-aside skin. The heat had hollowed me.

... [it] would seem like a daydream, like touching a tiger's face in the dark.

The warmth of outside was shaved from my skin and fell in curls to the floor.