“The door is locked from the outside; they went away and forgot me.”

– Lydia Millet

My Happy Life by Lydia Millet @ Bookshop

Quotes

And there above us was the sky in glory, and behind it invisible the rest of the universe, which later, science would say, might be expanding into infinity.

And all its atoms spread so thin they disappeared.

Whether or not this is the case, it certainly was more infinite than I could see. At the end of the universe, out side the end of everything, what nothing would be has always been beyond me. I never could understand it. But all through my happy life there has been no better thought than to try.

And as I looked the walls turned into sky. There were no stars and no constellations, but I knew anyway that the walls had turned transparent for good this time and would never be solid again.

So I was not alone. With me were the absent people. And all of them were not bodies but only the forms of all their sorrow and longing. By and by I felt what I had always known, that myself I was neither a city nor a rock, but only particles and figments. And like all people I was quite imaginary when I was alone. And alone we were all of us ghosts.