Living, being responsible for myself, seems like an insurmountable challenge lately.

“How are you more successful at dating than me,” he says, awed by the mystery of it all. “Easy,” I say. “I have lower standards.

“Maybe it’s private, what makes you happy.” “It’s Alex,” I blurt out.

She was tinier than me and fierce, a lover of murder mysteries and crocheting, spicy food and modern art.

Maybe things can always get better between people who want to do a good job loving each other. Maybe that’s all it takes.

It’s the very fact that it’s finite that makes traveling special. You could move to any one of those destinations you loved in small doses, and it wouldn’t be the spellbinding, life-altering seven days you spent there as a guest, letting a place into your heart fully, letting it change you.

(where we eat both breakfast and lunch in their café in silence while Alex reads Murakami and I take notes for future reference from a stack of Lonely Planet guides).

Don’t encourage people to blame you for something beyond your control.

But this, this is the moment I first think it. I am in love with you. The thought is terrifying, probably not even true. A dangerous idea to entertain. I release my hold on it, watch it slip away. But there are points in the center of my palms that burn, scorched, proof I once held it there.