“We might be broke, but we’re happy,” Carlos says..."And we’re happy because we enjoy ourselves in the moment. You’re broke and depressed.”

That I might never be anything but alone in my own body. In my own mind. That no one could ever make me feel whole.

When I close my eyes, the only things that have ever dropped from the sky in Gaza are droplets of rainfall. They nourish the gardens, they soothe the cracked, dry earth, they fall upon faces like a lullaby.

It’s less a breaking than it is a detaching. The way they lose their arms, the way they save themselves, is by going soft.

I was in love with him, I told myself, and he had proven himself to be completely unknowable.

As the sun fell toward the horizon, I lifted my sunglasses over my head. It turned out that the earth wasn’t a volcanic red. It was a dull, pastel color. I lowered my shades again. I much preferred it that way.