When the Moon Was Ours

by Anna-Marie McLemore

His hands were so sure, the pressure of his fingers so gradual and steady, that she couldn’t help thinking of his family, years ago. Their fields of crocuses. Their quick, delicate work of picking the saffron threads from the center of those purple flowers. She wondered if this was a thing that lived in his blood and in his fingers. A craft that started as finding wisps of red among violet petals, and that, through years and generations, became the skill of finding, easily and without hesitation, what he was looking for.

No boy was ever so interesting to them as when he was interesting to someone else.

I am not your garden, she said, the words no louder than the thread of her mother’s voice the wind carried. I am not one of your father’s pumpkin vines. You do not own what I grow.

Now that he knew Aracely was like him, he understood, and she knew that both he and she were creek beds, quiet when they were full and quiet when they were dry. But when they were half-full, wearing a coat of shallow water, the current bumped over the rocks and valleys in the creek beds, wearing down the earth. Giving someone else a little of who they were hurt more than giving up none or all of it.

“She wanted you to have the life you wanted,” Aracely said. “So figure out what kind of life you want.”

“What I’m wondering is what you care about more,” Ivy said. “Everyone knowing she’s a girl, or everyone knowing you like girls.” The second half of that threat was so weak, Miel felt the sudden rise of a laugh. She took a breath in, stopping it.

Out of everything else in her life, this seems the LEAST absurd thing to be worried about lol

To this whole town, she was odd and unnerving. To them, she was the motherless girl who came from the water tower and grew roses from her wrist, a girl whose skirt hem was always a little damp even on the driest days. Whatever they said about her liking girls or liking boys was a handful of water next to the whole river. It could not make her stranger, more unsettling to everyone else, than she already was.

“We don’t get to become who we are for nothing. It costs something. You’re fighting for every little piece of yourself. And maybe I got all of me all at once but I lost everything else. Don’t you dare think there’s any water in the world that makes this easy.”

The difference between baptism and drowning is a few faithless breaths.

Bioshock

With his weight on her, she was water and he was a moon, his gravity pulling her closer.

the water and the moon metaphor makes total sense now lol

That was the cruelest thing about losing someone. In being lost, they became so many different people, even more than when they were there.

“My mother loved me,” she said. Maybe her father had too. Maybe all he did—the bandages so tight her fingers turned numb, the end of the butter knife in the gas flame—was the form his love had taken. Maybe fear had twisted it, leaving it threadbare.

Still see this as abusive but hmm. Even though a lot of books really tout the whole 'forgive your parents for what they've done, they thought it was best' thing... this fits this book well even though i don't necessarily agree with the sentiment (they chose to stamp out a part of Miel at the cost of something great)

The cracks in the stained glass branched into smaller cracks, whitening the panels. Their secrets were killing them. They knew it. Speaking them gave the power of those unsaid things back, but it broke them into pieces like the stained glass.

The stained glass coffin as a representation of their warped 'truths'/beliefs is a great metaphor, i love it!!!

This is the thing I learned from loving a transgender boy who took years to say his own name: that waiting with someone, existing in that quiet, wondering space with them when they need it, is worth all the words we have in us.