she slammed the door andwas gone.I looked at the closed doorand at the doorknoband strangelyI didn't feelalone.

The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control.

For some people, she thought, trials were only temporary; they sailed towards happiness through the roughest weather.

Nos-tal-gic,_ Akira said, as though it were a word he had been struggling to find. Then he said a word in Japanese, perhaps the Japanese for __ostalgic._ __os-tal-gic. It is good to be nos-tal-gic. Very important.___eally, old fellow?___mportant. Very important. Nostalgic. When we nostalgic, we remember. A world better than this world we discover when we grow. We remember and wish good world come back again. So very important. Just now, I had dream. I was boy. Mother, Father, close to me. in our house.__e fell silent and continued to gaze across the rubble.__kira,_ I said, sensing that the longer this talk went on, the greater was some danger I did not wish fully to articulate. __e should move on. We have much to do.

I think about my mother singing after lunch on a Summer afternoon, twirling in blue dress across the floor of her dressing room

There__ always that one guy who gets a hold on you. Not like your best friend__ brother who gets you in a headlock kind of hold. Or the little kid you__e babysitting who attaches himself to your leg kind of hold. I__ talking epic. Life changing. The __an__ eat, can__ sleep, can__ do your homework, can__ stop giggling, can__ remember anything but his smile_ kind of hold. Like, Wesley and Buttercup proportions. Harry and Sally. Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. The kind of hold in all your favorite _80s songs, like the __ust Have Been Love__, the __ake My Breath Away__, the __ternal Flame____he ones you sing into a hairbrush-microphone at the top of your lungs with your best friends on a Saturday night.