When the weather turned warm, we lived like we were dying, and often forgot that we were. We were school children, free for the summer without a care in the world. It was a summer from a fairy-tale, the kind where you read on long blades of grass in the shade of the trees, swim in mountain lakes, and chase fireflies at night. It was the kind that brought late nights twirling on dance floors, spontaneous flights out of town, and breakfasts in bed. It brought “I love you’s,” and laughter, and little consciousness of our looming futures. We ate lemon sorbet and buttered ears of corn and we held each other. Her love breathed life into my failing body, and mine into hers, so that we marched through those bright days like champions of a battle, like lovers blissfully unaware.