Containment Theory He knows that every morning for several months he will forget while sleeping that he is an orphan now, and the knowledge will hit him while he puts a filter in the coffee pot or while he is shaving, meeting his own eyes in the mirror as the razor nicks his skin and the shaving cream turns pink with blood.

1 The Shadow Summer » tiny summer thoughts.

3 I been downhearted, babe There's an uneasy feeling creeping up in my blood.

1 Airport Countries But airports are temporary by nature, free-floating and without connection, though they connect thousands of people each day: families, lovers, business associates.

Window But right now he's walking down a sidewalk at two in the morning, in the company of drunks and off-duty call girls, wondering if he could compare the sudden crash of Elaine's laugh to the sound of traffic and get away with it.

Other Lamentations for Summer He sits thinking of Annelore's eyelashes, pale and fine in the morning. Of his brother's hand against his face, wanting to start over. Of all his other lamentations for summer.

8 Chalk He first sees her from a second-floor window, when she's just a smudge of white against the asphalt. Chalk, he thinks. She doesn't look any more permanent than that.

2 Coats She knows how to be alone, but not how to be alone when other people can see you, and you haven't got any defense.

2 The loneliest thing when you almost mistake the ocean at night for a barren field

3 Lostness I was afraid, for the first time, that I was going to die. Not of hunger or cold or at the hands of sinister people, like we learned about in school. I might vanish, just from sheer lostness.