I’ve read numerous articles about the murders, searching for some shred of evidence, some hidden rationale for this crime, but the more I read, the faster the details fade, like water smearing ink on a handwritten letter.

“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.