Shatter Me Starter Pack: Books 1-3 and Novellas 1 & 2: Shatter Me, Destroy Me, Unravel Me, Fracture Me, Ignite Me

by Tahereh Mafi

We are both alone, both existing as the absence of something else.

Raindrops are my only reminder that clouds have a heartbeat. That I have one, too.

some explanation for my inability to do anything without ruining everything.

I spent my life folded between the pages of books.

Hate looks just like everybody else until it smiles.

My words wear no parachutes as they fall out of my mouth.

I can’t control the easy laughter that escapes my lips; I don’t want to. I haven’t felt like laughing in so long. And I can’t help but be amazed at the power such small, unassuming animals wield over us; they so easily break down our defenses. I run

I’m checking my pockets for spare words and sentences but I’m finding none, not an adverb, not a preposition or even a dangling participle because there doesn’t exist a single response to such an outlandish request.

I don’t know why my heart is losing its mind.

“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.”

“Nothing in this life will ever make sense to me but I can’t help but try to collect the change and hope it’s enough to pay for our mistakes.”

My eyes are filling fast with tears and I blink and blink but the world is a mess and I want to laugh because all I can think is how horrible and beautiful it is, that our eyes blur the truth when we can’t bear to see it.

I

am no longer afraid of fear, and I will not let it rule me. Fear will learn to fear me.

No gun, no sword, no army or king will ever be more powerful than a sentence. Swords may cut and kill, but words will stab and stay, burying themselves in our bones to become corpses we carry into the future, all the time digging and failing to rip their skeletons from our flesh.

Everything I want to say and everything I’ve wished to say begins to take shape, falling to the floor and scrambling upright. Paragraphs and paragraphs begin building walls around me, blocking and justifying as they find ways to fit together, linking and weaving and leaving no room for escape. And every single space between every unspoken word clambers up and into my open mouth, down my throat and into my chest, filling me with so much emptiness I think I might just float away.

Moments and minutes and memories build and break between us.

And we are quotation marks, inverted and upside down, clinging to one another at the end of this life sentence.

We are hours and minutes reaching for the same second, holding hands as we spin forward into new days and the promise of something better.