You dumb-ass," I crooned, kissing her on the forehead. "You don't share me. You own me.

Whoever said that the past isn't dead had it backward. It's the future that's already dead, already played out.

But still, I find the need to remind myself of the temporariness of a day, to reassure myself that I got through yesterday, I'll get through today.

We stand there for a moment, staring at each other, savoring it. And then all at once, we slam together. Mia's legs are off the ground, wrapped around my waist, her hands dipping in my hair, my hands tangled in hers. And our lips. There isn't enough skin, enough spit, enough time, for the lost years that our lips are trying to make up for as they find each other. We kiss. The electric current switches to high. The lights throughout all of Brooklyn must be surging.

But that's the thing with death. The whisper of it descent travels fast and wide, and people must've know I'd become a corpse because nobody even came to view the body.

She said it was because one day I was going to have to go through a metamorphosis like a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly and that scared me, so butterflies scared me.

A journey of a thousand miles starts with just ten digits.

For my first recital ever, they gave me a cello. And for this one, they gave me you.

I'll be your mess, you be mineThat was the deal that we had signed