円柱: cylinder; column

爬虫: reptile

涸れる: to dry up / 枯れる: of a plant: to wither; to wilt; to die / 枯れる, 嗄れる: of one's voice: to become husky; to become hoarse

dead, dried leaf

You should treasure every encounter, for it will never recur.

vicissitudes, the way that the world or a person prospers one day and declines the next

dotting the i's and crossing the t's

successive series of questions and responses

distal demonstrative, something far off removed from both speaker and listener: that, yon / particularly, male personal third person pronoun: he / by extension from he: boyfriend

he; boyfriend