“Every few minutes or so I would remember the look from the man who had wanted fifty cents, and I'd look at that framed memory hanging in myself and it meant I was here, back in this sick city, but in other ways I was not here at all and anyone who looked closely could see that I had nothing to give, that I was a junk drawer, a collection of things that may or may not have had a use.”

“It depressed me to think that I might have been looking at another person but seeing only myself.”

“I sometimes wondered why I even answered the phone, but I guess I always had the hope that it would be someone else, some other way of life calling for me.”

“She missed his nothing. It had felt like something.”

“But what had really happened? It was still unclear. Was it possible nothing of any significance had ever happened between us and our ending was just the sad process of realizing this?”

“Speaking felt impossible, as contained and enclosed as she was, a longing that went on a loop, a longing for nothing at all.”

“I closed my eyes, tried to get as far away from myself as I could.”

“She was sure no one had ever been more in love than they were in those weeks, consumed by such longing, wanting to just be alive beside each other.”

“I couldn't decide how to feel about what he was saying, whether it was all nonsense or just more evidence that I would never understand this world.”

“It was grotesque and eerie, too strange of a dream.”

“He would never be that way again. He would never have the power of that specific kind of not-knowing.”