On the conveyor belt, the first cut is always for love. A rarity among our usual haul, love is a precious resource. I was surprised, therefore, to learn on my first day that we don’t cut it out. I thought we’d use the small scissors to free it—that tender, pulsing riblet—the serrated ones that fit right in against the bone. But we didn’t. Nor did we drain it, like we do so much of the rest. No, in Hell we leave the love in.

Not because we’re sentimental, but because you are.

Love is one of these things humans experience, twist to fit their cage of mortality, and then claim to have invented. I’m not blaming you, far from it. Love was made to be coveted, and humans are nothing if not convinced of their right to take. I don’t even blame you for the jealousy and insecurity; we sent you those viruses ourselves, courtesy of the Fourth Floor. But the way you clutch at love, show it off, lose it and wail, find it again and forget all that you learned the time before—it’s all wrong. To us, you’re like a kid who finds his mom’s vibrator in her dresser and uses it as a microphone for a game of Look, I’m Famous.

Bless your heart, dear. That’s not what that’s for.

Love—as it is in the wild, no fingerprints on the glass—knows nothing of time. If you were lucky enough for your first fall to be in love and not loss, you might get what I’m talking about. The pure stuff, like flying before you look down. Like learning that the body you thought you had to fill all by yourself actually came with an extension; that neither worked alone, but together—bam, all of the lights come on.

That’s how love is supposed to be. When you add in time, however, it does what time always does. Brings everything, eventually, inevitably, to its end.

After loss, love is never the same. That is not to say you won’t love another, maybe even more than ever before. But as you love them, you will mourn them. You’ll try not to, of course. Try to say, “You never know.” But you do. You know.

And every inch gained in flight is an inch added to the fall.

That’s why, when you’re flat-backed on the belt, we don’t cut the love out. Every time you manage to think about that which you love—remember a face or a smell—you will be bird-dogged, instantly, by the bone saw of reality. Not how it will end, but how it already has.

Love tortures you more than we ever could.

“No,” I said. “It’s not.”