Mexican Red-rumped Tarantula By: Chris Mattison From: A Practical Guide To Exotic Pets 1994

Thank you for letting me experience your love. Thank you for letting me share my love with you all those years ago. If there had to be anyone in this lifetime to hold that title of being my first love, I’m glad my soul chose you. The greatest gift you’ve ever given me, long ago, was showing me what love is supposed to feel like.

There will come a day where I won’t be able to recall your face. As the years pass by, my memory got foggy. Your voice has gone, followed by your laugh and then…your touch. You lingered until you eventually went away. A distant memory that I used to know. What can never fade is knowing that what I felt, what we shared, was real…and that I loved you. Even with age, I’m relieved to know that my body will remember what my mind will forget.

A decade later and yet, I am still protective over you and our story. I always will. You’ll always have a piece of my heart. Thank you for everything. I’ll go now. It’s time for me to let you go.

—A farewell to my first love

Silent Hill (1999)

“There were lots of ways to love someone, I guessed, both by remembering and forgetting.“

— Sarah Dessen, The Rest of the Story

Julian K. Jarboe, “As Tender Feet of Cretan Girls Danced Once Around an Altar of Love.” Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel

“Most persecutors are just misguided protectors” I’m going to bite you

The intimacy of “How did you know that?”

“because I know you.”

Anne Carson, from Grief lessons: Four plays by Euripides.

— Vladimir Nabokov, Letters to Vera

Every time it rains I just sit and listen