For all the people who have infected me with amor deliria nervosa in the past
- you know who you are.
For the people who will infect me in the future
- I can't wait to see who you'll be.
And in both cases:
Thank you.

I love you. Remember. They cannot take it

I don’t like that smell,” Julian says quietly. If he were less well trained, and less careful, he would say hate. But he can’t say it; it is too close to passion, and passion is too close to love, and love is amor deliria nervosa, the deadliest of all deadly things: It is the reason for the games of pretend, for the secret selves, for the spasms in the throat.

The devil stole into the Garden of Eden.

He carried with him the disease— amor deliria nervosa —

in the form of a seed. It grew and flowered into a

magnificent apple tree, which bore apples as bright as blood.

This is the past: It drifts, it gathers. If you are not careful, it will bury you. This is half the reason for the cure: It clean-sweeps; it makes the past, and all its pain, distant, like the barest impression on sparkling glass.
But the cure works differently for everybody; and it does not work perfectly for all.

It’s hard not to be afraid while I’m still uncured, though so far the deliria hasn’t touched me yet.

Still, I worry. They say that in the old days, love drove people to madness.

That’s bad enough. The Book of Shhh also tells stories of those who died because of love lost or never found, which is what terrifies me the most.

The deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both when you have it and when you don’t.