"...the tug of war coursing through him..."

From Ash Cinema, by Edward J. Rathke:

Each step to the flower brought youth and each step to the notebook dug his grave. He stood between, where boundary met boundary, the draw of the past and the promise of future. For twenty three minutes he stood, inert, weaving into the fiber of his life, each one, the past, the future, sewn to his heart, to that place at the center of him that houses all that he is, where a name sits with a promise.

Good book so far. Very haunting.