His presence suddenly made things feel off-kilter…

“We both knew no bounds to our escapism.”

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

“There is the body of history ever atop of us, and the body of memory rustling within us. Between the two, we are crushed.”

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

“I was born walking, born in the nowhere between galaxies.”

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

“I am a memory house for those I have lost, those I no longer know.”

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

“One day you look in the mirror and you see your parents' sadness in your eyes.”

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

“Her father kneels and unclasps the urn. Above the waves she falls graceful as snow, my sister, my Sonora.”

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

“I look out at the reservation, still and glittering with casinos, and think of all the death dried up and buried in its dirt.”

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

“When you are rich, your past disappears. You get everything you want when you want it . . . Everyone wants to know you.…

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

“With the years, we become even more ourselves and call this change.”

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

“I lit a cigarette. 'Go ahead, take a smoke,' my father said. 'It won't kill you. Only sadness will.”

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

“We would survive even ourselves, as long as we were together.”

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

“I called Eli. I asked him to come save my life.”

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

“I first understood why Christians prayed for a savior in the form of a beautiful man. He had absolved me of the blue-streaked blond.”

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

“I looked at Laura . . . and wondered at how many lives before this life we might have known together.”

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

“This is it. This is how I always saw heaven, always by the sea, always by night, always in the dark.”

— Hannah Lillith Assadi