This is magnificent. I treasured every word and syllable of it. Wow, you write desire so well, and the moon so well, and, for one who loves autumn so, the heat of summer so very, very well. I could read it over and over.

At the start, when you said "a staccato ghost of the echoes rolling back and forth between the skyscrapers"--nothing has ever instantly called to mind watching/listening to the fireworks from Kendall square for me like those lines. [pause for nostalgia]

Well... I could have written down pages of beautiful lines, but here is a very small bouquet, your own words offered back to you:

Passionless and certain as a catechism....

Down through the darkness, silver slides and buckles on restive water, striations where the ocean floods one way and tide drags another...

Adrenaline stitched her chest like a scar...

With moonlight splintered between her teeth, molten in her throat, Maddy starts to ask, "Is it too late?" but Brace's finger presses silence to her lips, angel of the world before preserving secrets into the world to come, and his eyes are the only reminder of earth in all this star-skinned night.

"It's always too late."


Well, this is a true gift. Thank you very much.