The Sea of Tranquility

by Katja Millay

you can only go so long being angry before you learn to hate. I stopped feeling so sorry for myself and started hating instead. Whining was pathetic, but hate got things done. Hate strengthened my body and shaped my resolve and what I resolved to do was to get revenge. Hate seemed pretty damn healthy to me.

He tears apart faces and puts them back together whole, like I would a piece of music. I could play it a hundred ways, imbue it with a different emotion every time and try to find the truth of it. He does that with faces, except he’s not putting the truth in, he’s drawing it out. He’s looking for the truth of me. I wonder if he’ll find it, and if he does, maybe he can show me where it is again.

I know at that moment what he’s given me and it’s not a chair. It’s an invitation, a welcome, the knowledge that I am accepted here. He hasn’t given me a place to sit. He’s given me a place to belong.

I let him watch me. He lets me watch him. We never call each other on it. It’s a gift we give one another. No strings, no expectations, no reading between the lines. We’re like mysteries to one another. Maybe if I can solve him and he can solve me, we can explain each other. Maybe that’s what I need. Someone to explain me.

every time someone dies you start counting how much time has passed since they’ve been gone. First you count it in minutes, then in hours. You count in days, then weeks, then months. Then one day you realize that you aren’t counting anymore, and you don’t even know when you stopped. That’s the moment they’re gone.

“I like finding things no one else is looking for. Things that got lost or forgotten, shoved in a corner. Stuff I never knew existed. I don’t even need to buy it. I just like to find it and know that it’s there. That’s the part I like.”

Just another random piece in a puzzle made of all the wrong pieces.

I’m not sure how long we sit in Josh’s truck, holding hands, surrounded by darkness and unspoken regrets. But it’s long enough to know that there are no stories or secrets in the world worth holding onto more than his hand.

I am weak and strong. I am terrified and brave. I am lost and found. I am here and gone.

Maybe I don’t need to save her forever. Maybe I can just save her right now, in this moment, and if I can do that, maybe it will save me and maybe that can be enough.

being kissed by Josh Bennett is kind of like being saved. It’s a promise and a memory of the future and a book of better stories.

“Every day you save me.”

the glass I’ve been looking through is coated in the dust of my own perception and I haven’t seen what’s real. Because before it was black and white, evil and not. And that’s the most confusing part—figuring out what’s true.