Cross My Heart

by Megan Collins

And it breaks my heart that, in order for me to live, she first had to die.

I’d picture my heart as a giant wad of gum, malleable enough for someone to chew.

It’s just how things go: sparks become fires, and fires burn out.

it’s always there in my mind, that my presence is a kickstand, keeping them from riding as fast and far as they want.

Admittedly, though, I’m confused about it myself. If he told police he didn’t hear Daphne fall because he was working in his office with music on, then why did he tell me he needs “complete silence” to write?

Not because her work lacked quality, but because the best-known poets are usually dead.

But the fear—that I’d tire of her, leave her, unlove her—grew like a tumor, the kind that presses against the brain, alters the personality.

“I worry that everything beautiful, even love, eventually ends in bloodshed.”

It’s only now, years later, I wish I’d seen it as a warning.

what he was most drawn to in a woman was the darkness she’d survived.

It comes down to a simple truth: it’s easier, sometimes, to be miserable in love than it is to be alone.

“That poor man never even proposed to you.”

If you need to work so hard to make it perfect, it’s really not the one.

Either way, one of the most dangerous things about Blair in the end was that, to her, her story wasn’t crazy at all; it was common: she’d simply loved someone.