Talk to nicely.

A lot of things change when you die.

All the myriad of processes at which your body has persisted ceaselessly since forming in your mother's womb, they end.

And though in life you barely took notice of the inflation of your lungs or the pounding of your heart,

not to mention the measured division of your lungs or the pounding of your heart, not to mention the measured

division of your cells or the tireless efforts of a billion trillion little proteins, each

carrying out its infinitesimal task on your behalf.

When all this fades, and you are left alone, without organs, without mass, less than flame or smoke or starlight, just

a creature of dream. Then all at once, you experience a profound feeling of appreciation,

that any of it ever happened at all. Life. What a miraculous thing it was.

And when it's gone, and there is still a you at all,

it makes you wonder, how?

After all, if you were never really made of cells,

then what are you made of? The answer, it turns out, is

desire. From eternal darkness, the cosmos wished itself into being. Stars willed themselves

to shine, and later, life. Life yearned itself awake and aware, and into me and to you, and to everything

that walks or crawls or swims or grows. We are woven of desire. And when our mortal

bodies perish, all the unsatiated yearnings of our being, all the cravings and passions and desperate

hungers, the need to be warm and safe, to see and be seen, to know, and to love, and

to be loved, they remain.

In life, Abigail Alyssa von Gothenburg had wanted to be held and be kissed and to feel

another's hand in hers. But then she died, and the chance of fulfilling these desires died with her.

...