With a suddenness that almost cracked in the silent wasteland, she strode towards me, the snow crunching and ice crackling underfoot. Close enough that I could see the pores on her face, the individual eyelashes, memories of them clumped together, us laying on the couch, collapsing in a fit of giggles, laughing at something from earlier in the night, watching the sun come up. That conversation that you have, all night and into the morning, till the sky pinkens and cracks the shield of safe night, bringing you into another day, the excitement in the pit of your stomach. Sometimes it doesn't stop.

And if it doesn't, then you should grab it and hold it as though your life, your very existence in the universe depends on it, because it does, in a way that I couldn't even begin to comprehend then. It goes to the heart of everything, and you run for it and grab it and hold it, and hope, with all the pitiful self-interest in the shallow cesspool of your heart that the other thinks the same. Because then, just then, you have a chance. Sometimes though, the conversation stops. And I knew then, just then that I had none.