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Quote by Aliza S.

“Her scent was so distinct, one you could almost never forget, of ocean salt and roses almost as if she was Aphrodite herself, born out of the foam of the sea and despite the godly picturesqueness, she looked so simple and austere like she was just a damsel who had lived near the sea her entire life.”

Quote by Aliza S.

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the poppy fields near the French countryside

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Aliza S.

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“But she was so beautiful, it was all forgiven. She was the kind of beautiful I have seen only in print. She was so beautiful I would do anything she asked me to do. If she asked for the moon, I would put a lasso around it and give it to her. If she asked for the stars, I would spend eternity plucking them off the tapestry of the sky, but I could not give her the sun for she was my Sun, my reason for living, the reason to wake up in the morning.”

“It was hard to invest in a person when one saw how things passed. Take the ball player, for example, who dedicates his life, gets injured, and then watches the sport proceed without him. He sits on his leather couch, watching better athletes run across his television screen, younger ones on renovated fields. And he, who sacrificed his sweat, youth, and sanity to the sport and knew coaches, teammates, and even janitors at the stadium like brothers—is forced to still live afterward. His teammates said kind words before a match, hugged him after a goal, but now seem to be focused on new seasons and new goals. He gets left behind. Did none of it mean anything? He cries for the fast world to stop and says, “Slow down. This pains me. We were just here. I used to joke with you. We said we loved each other. Wait for me. Will you just wait for me?” Those hands he shook after a victory could not care for the weeping, broken-footed man hiding in the shadows of his home, once lit by the sun, once the life of the party. When Andrei walked into a job now, or even met someone for the first time, he thought: How long will it take you to forget me?”

“Sometimes, Andrei would feel like the moon. When he dined in solitude, when he masturbated to the couple at the hotel, or when he finished a book he could tell no one around him about, he felt singular and unaccompanied, like the stupid, radiating circle stuck in the sky. His soul would glow softly, through the darkness, deadened, but there, as if solemnly leaving a light on for anyone to come join him. Andrei would feel so far away from everyone else, like a floating object in space, lost in orbit, that no hand worried about, remembered, or attempted to retrieve.”

“Sometimes, a feeling would creep over Andrei. And actually, it would creep over the dead man’s son beside him, too. A particular awareness would swallow them both individually, in different moments in their lives, for a few seconds. They would lie in bed and out of nowhere, freeze as they remembered that all sensation would end. Everything they’d worked on would be entirely erased. Movement would cease. The visor of consciousness would be taken off. Andrei, and his new friend, would someday no longer have the capacity to try. And they would no longer remember that they could try. They would simply no longer remember.”

“People had tried to reel Raphael in from his silence. Their attempts were precisely why he felt so uncomfortable. He did not want to be saved or included. He liked to listen. When he asked a question, it was because he wanted to know the answer. But then they turned it around to ask, “What about you?” and this bothered Raphael, who believed the speaker only returned the question out of manners and so was never a real inquiry. Raphael would be pressured to respond and endure the painful seconds of saying something someone did not want to hear. He would trace their faltering eyes, then his words would crumble into sand, and his listener would never notice because they were not interested in the first place.”

“From my understanding, this is a matter of value?” asked Andrei. “Like other men have had her leg, so her leg doesn’t mean anything to you anymore?” “No... no, that’s not even it. It’s that you can’t pretend to give someone your leg. Even if it’s just a photo. Legs can’t pretend. You can, but legs can’t. And when someone gets your leg, it’s given. And you multiply that by a hundred, but she has only two. Two little legs. And it’s as if her legs know. The body is not meant to be mass distributed, Andrei. We’re not large gods in Olympus—we need assistance climbing up the stairs and eventually porcelain teeth to chew our food. Thousands of strangers have every part of my girlfriend’s body, down to the ears. But the one thing they don’t have is a woman in the other room sending herself away. They don’t have that,” cried Raphael. “I have that.”