Unravel Me (The Juliette Chronicles, #2)

by Tahereh Mafi

We’re running out of time, he said. As if time were the kind of thing you could run out of, as if it were measured into bowls that were handed to us at birth and if we ate too much or too fast or right before jumping into the water then our time would be lost, wasted, already spent.

But time is beyond our finite comprehension. It’s endless, it exists outside of us; we cannot run out of it or lose track of it or find a way to hold on to it. Time goes on even when we do not.

I’m always apologizing. Forever apologizing. For who I am and what I never meant to be and for this body I was born into, this DNA I never asked for, this person I can’t unbecome.

It’s the kind of kiss that makes you realize oxygen is overrated.

Loneliness is a strange sort of thing. It creeps up on you, quiet and still, sits by your side in the dark, strokes your hair as you sleep. It wraps itself around your bones, squeezing so tight you almost can’t breathe. It leaves lies in your heart, lies next to you at night, leaches the light out from every corner. It’s a constant companion, clasping your hand only to yank you down when you’re struggling to stand up.

Stop sitting in the dark counting out all your individual feelings about how sad and lonely you are. Wake up,” he says. “You’re not the only person in this world who doesn’t want to get out of bed in the morning.

“I’m going to go get more coffee.” “I thought you said it was disgusting.” He levels a look at me. “Yes, but I am a sad, sad man with very low standards.”

The sun and the moon and the stars called and said, “Turn down the beaming, please, because you’re making it hard for us to see,”

“Run run run until you can’t hear their feet behind you. Run until they drop their fists and their shouts dissolve in the air. Run with your eyes open and your mouth shut and dam the river rushing up behind your eyes. Run, Juliette. “Run until you drop dead. “Make sure your heart stops before they ever reach you. Before they ever touch you. “Run, I said.”

“How am I supposed to go back?” he asks, so quietly. “How am I supposed to forget what it was like to be with you? To be loved by you?”

button. “I think there’s something about the impermanence of life these days that makes it necessary to etch ink into our skin,” he says. “It reminds us that we’ve been marked by the world, that we’re still alive. That we’ll never forget.”

“On the darkest days you have to search for a spot of brightness, on the coldest days you have to seek out a spot of warmth; on the bleakest days you have to keep your eyes onward and upward and on the saddest days you have to leave them open to let them cry. To then let them dry. To give them a chance to wash out the pain in order to see fresh and clear once again.”

This blond boy has my secrets in his mouth.

We can hide in a cupboard under the stairs our whole life and it’ll still find us. Death will show up wearing an invisible cloak and it will wave a magic wand and whisk us away when we least expect it.

okay harry potter

I count all the steps I’ve climbed toward the noose hanging from the ceiling of my existence and I count out the number of times I’ve been stupid and I run out of numbers.

He has a hundred thousand million kisses and he’s giving them all to me.

The message from the sky is clear: we are pissed. We are pissed and we will punish you and we will make you pay for the blood you spill so freely. We will not sit idly by, not anymore, not ever again. We will ruin you, is what the sky says to us. How could you do this to me? it whispers in the wind. I gave you everything, it says to us. Nothing will ever be the same again.

And I’m stronger. I’m angrier. I’m ready to do something I’ll definitely regret and this time I don’t care. I’m done being nice. I’m done being nervous. I’m not afraid of anything anymore. Mass chaos is in my future.