Nothing killed it. But was it ever alive? And when you looked up close, was ours even love? And if not love, then what? Broken, battered, blighted, wasted love shuddering in a cold alley like an injured pet that had lost its owner and scarcely survived a run-in with a bad dog, was this really love?—without heart, without kindness, without charity, without love, even. Our love was like stagnant water behind locked sluices. Nothing lived in it.
