"I've been dying all my life," she said in her absent manner, as if speaking to her night time ceiling with the moving shadows, instead of to the living being in her bed. If she'd dared to look at him, maybe he wouldn't have felt so lost in her embrace. Maybe things could have been different.

But she didn't look, and everything remained unchanged.

"I've been dying since I met you," he sighed against her skin, wasted breath. She was asleep.