They Both Die at the End

by Adam Silvera

No one should spend their last hours second-guessing people.

I’ll be gone before I can adjust to my mortality.

I don’t know how to do this. No one gives you lessons on how to brace everyone for your death,

No matter how we choose to live, we both die at the end.

A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.

Every new minute we’re alive is a miracle.

It sucks that that was the last time I’ll ever dream. It wasn’t even a good one.

am I going to be able to find love up there since I never got the chance to find it down here?”

“That love is a superpower we all have, but it’s not always a superpower I’d be able to control. Especially as I get older. Sometimes it’ll go crazy and I shouldn’t be scared if my power hits someone I’m not expecting it to.”

I almost wish we weren’t so creative in this moment, because these fake memories of friendship feel incredible. Imagine that—reliving something you never lived.

We have each other’s back. We’ll stretch this day out as long as possible, like we’re the summer solstice.

She says everything in this hug—every thank-you, every I-love-you, every apology. I squeeze her back to thank her, to make her feel my love, to apologize, and everything else that falls deep inside and skirts outside these realms. It’s the sweetest moment in our friendship

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

the greatest thing in the world is to love and be loved in return

“I miss when I was so young I didn’t know to be afraid of death.

Even when you know death is coming, the blaze of it all is still sudden.

Maybe heartbreak kills.