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I believed our stars would give him faith. I believed they would keep him alive so long as he could look up and see they hadn’t fallen.
We spent our whole lives together pretending, but if you pretend for too long, reality reminds you one way or another that it doesn’t like being insulted.
Time, disease, and death are rueful mechanics that way. They enjoy crafting nooses out of fear, and they love playing games. Shadows are their tools, curving over your shoulders with eerie fingers, coaxing you into the dark, taking your body, your mind, and anything they please with it. Time, disease, and death are the greatest thieves in the world.
We’re greedy creatures, but not ungrateful. You don’t have to partake in destruction to admire the weapons.
The night isn’t the enemy I make it out to be. It’s the natural state of things when your sun burns out.
“I’m not shy—I don’t think. I’m just bad at existing.”
Destruction is addictive, he writes. The more I am, the less I want to be. The less I am, the lesser I want to become.
If there’s one nice thing about books and movies, it’s that they can make you forget for a while.
“I think the worst feeling in the world is telling someone you’re in pain and hearing them say there’s no wound.”
depression is a better thief than you or I ever will be. It steals moments that should be yours.
“You don’t realize how powerful loneliness can be till even hurting yourself isn’t painful enough to sate it.”
That’s why I bury memories. Living them once was enough. Reliving them is a destructive habit.
The thoughts of self-hatred bite at your pride because you fell into a pit with a greedy animal. It convinced you to cut away at your skin till it became hilled with scars. It ate your joy, your pain, everything you had until all that was left was the shell of your body, but you survived.
Pain and I had a neat arrangement. As long as I promised never to feel anything else, it stayed at bay.
“They’re only scars,” I say, kissing the edge of her wrist. “Like the essential parts of us kept only for the gazes of mirrors and lovers.”
“Everything in life is a gamble, my dear, even love itself.”
Time is kind with grief. It takes it from you, piece by piece, till the sorrow is a song you remember the beat of but no longer hear.
My loneliness festered. It ate at me. I was a patch of soil, a feeding ground for weeds of shame to grow and flourish till I turned to nothing.
Stories gave me an out, a loophole in life’s weaving.
LONELINESS IS A soft-spoken abuser, singing lullabies, you are alone, you are nothing, you are empty.
Love doesn’t fade when people do.”
He was made of poetry and broken things.
