“It was Samson’s favourite game, but even he knew in his little boy’s way that his brother was gone and would not be returning, and they would never be playing the game again. He’d seen it in his parents’ harrowed faces, he’d heard it in their sobs and cries. He’d watched from the staircase as they spoke in the living room, and though he couldn’t hear the policemen’s low, hushed voices, he’d seen the way his mother folded over and crumpled into his father’s shaking arms.”

“Cindy was the last girl to arrive at the house. As with all the other girls, there was no car that dropped her off, no sound of the front door opening, no footsteps on the stairs. One day, they just looked up and there she was, standing nervous in the doorway.”

“The most surprising thing was not that you were there, but how young you looked. You were exactly the same as the last time I saw you, all those years ago. Exactly the same as the day we met for the very last time at our usual spot, in the backwoods by the old road. You’d brought a couple of coca-colas and for a while we sat at the edge of the pond, leaning against each other and sipping them in that warm late-summer silence.”

“If only I had been the boy my father wanted me to be. If only I could be like all the other boys. Maybe then he would’ve kept me close and noticed when I was gone. Maybe then I wouldn’t have had to be gone at all.”

“Sometimes he gets caught up in his own interiority; all by himself, lost in that constantly rushing sea of quiet thoughts and contemplations. As if the world is just his small apartment, that burnt out light above the kitchen sink, the stained and empty mug on the table, and him sitting silently on the couch.”

“To miss you again is to be nothing. It’s to drift through my days as a ghost. I walk through this old city and stare up at buildings that remind of you, and of a time when I truly felt at home. I see a familiar rooftop in the distance and flash back to the moment I dangled my legs off of it and laid my head to rest on your shoulder. “

“I have a vision of us, maybe months or years from now, lying in a shared bed in my lamp-lit room, our legs tangled underneath the covers. It’s quiet and dark, and I’m sitting up. You’re sleepy, your breathing slow and steady, and your arm is tossed gently across my lap.”

“You sit alone in your room, bundled in covers, sipping water in the dark, and you decide to light a candle. You think about a boy, who is probably thinking about other boys, and you wonder about first kisses and last kisses and everything that happens in between.”

“I told a story once. It was dark and stormy and full of strange confessions whispered into an open ear. All the world was a stage for me, and I told a story full of hope and love and heartbreak and betrayal and all the things we try to piece together to make ourselves whole.”