A Thousand Broken Pieces (A Thousand Boy Kisses #2)

by Tillie Cole

For those who have lost a loved one, I walk with you. For those who have lost a piece of their heart, I hold your hand. For those who don’t know how to move on, I pray this book gives you solace.

“I have come to understand that death, for the sick, is not so hard to endure. For us, eventually our pain ends, we go to a better place. But for those left behind, their pain only magnifies.”

She looked over her shoulder, to where Rune was sitting on the bed, laying kiss after kiss on my older sister’s hands, her fingers, her face, looking at his Poppymin like he always had—like she had been designed solely for him.

In that moment, I lost something in my soul that I knew I would never get back.

I was simply broken. I didn’t know how to heal, how to put myself back together again. The truth was, when Poppy died, all light vanished from my world, and I’d been stumbling around in the dark ever since.

“So she won’t miss out on new adventures,” he would tell me. Then there were the days when he would visit Poppy, and I would sit behind a nearby tree, unnoticed and hidden, and listen to him speak to her. When tears would cascade from my eyes at the unfairness of the world. At us losing the brightest star in our skies, at Rune losing half of his heart. As far as I knew, he had never dated anyone else. He told me once that he would never feel about anyone else the way he felt about Poppy and that although their time together was short, it had been enough to last him a lifetime.

grief never left us. Instead we adapted, like it was a new appendage we had to learn to use. That at any moment, pain and heartache could strike and break us. But eventually we would develop the tools to cope with it and find a way to move on.

Because she was buried in the ground behind me. Eternally seventeen. The age I was now. Never to grow old. Never to shine her light. Never to share her music. A travesty the world would forever be deprived of.

“But the thing I’ve found hardest since we lost Poppy…” I held my breath, waiting for what she would say. Ida’s shoulders dropped and she whispered, “Was that awful day… I lost you too.”

Poppy, please, if you can hear me. Help me. Please, just one last time. Help me get through this. Help me learn how to live without you. Help me be okay.

It was one of the worst things, I thought, when you lost someone. Having good news to share, and for a second—just one borrowed second of peace—being excited to tell them. Before reality inevitably crashed down, and you were reminded that you would never tell them anything again. And the good news you wanted to share suddenly didn’t seem so exciting anymore. In fact, it felt like a stab in the chest, and you no longer looked forward to anything significant happening to you ever again.

A loved one’s death wasn’t a onetime thing that you had to endure. It was an endless cycle. A cruel Groundhog Day that burned away at your heart and soul until there was nothing left but scorched flesh where they once had been.