“I loved him the way it feels when you get hot wax on the inside of your wrist and while it’s burning, just as sudden, it’s a cool thick skin. Like it tastes to eat sweet snow, above the daffodil bulbs - not that I’ve ever found it, but clean snow that melts to nothing on the heat of your tongue so that you’re not even sure if it was ever there. I loved him like spaniel joy at a scent in the grass - riveted, lost. I loved him so much that it felt as if it had to be taken away from me at any moment, changed - how could something like that be allowed to exist on this earth?”

—	“Ice”, The Rose & the Beast by Francesca Lia Block