The Light We Lost

by Jill Santopolo

There’s something about death that makes people want to live.

You were daring, brave, committed to capturing art.

I don’t want that kind of life, creating what sells.”

making a mark—in a positive way. Leaving the world a little bit better than it was when you found

Kissing you in the middle of tragedy and death felt completely right and absolutely wrong at the same time. But I concentrated on the part that felt right, the way I always do.

“The thing about roads,” I said, “is sometimes you happen upon them again. Sometimes you get another chance to travel down the same path.”

I wanted to climb inside your skin, inside your mind, so I could know all there was to know about you.

“Thank you for telling me,” I said softly. You kissed me again. “Thank you for being someone I wanted to tell.”

I should’ve made you explain yourself. I should’ve called you out for flirting with someone else, for not coming to find me. But you were like a drug. When I was high on you, nothing else mattered.

Free will, despite our fate.

“I think life is just life. We’re put in situations and we make choices and that’s why things happen the way they do.

people can end their lives having gotten all that they wanted out of it.”

Love does that. It makes you feel infinite and invincible, like the whole world is open to you, anything is achievable, and each day will be filled with wonder. Maybe it’s the act of opening yourself up, letting someone else in—or maybe it’s the act of caring so deeply about another person that it expands your heart.

As soon as you started keeping secrets, we had no chance.

we only reveal our true selves to the people we care about most.

What I wanted to tell you is that there are lots of ways to love people and I know that you’ll love someone else again. Even if it’s not the same, some of it might be better.”

“I love you, Lucy, like hydrogen loves oxygen. A totally different kind of love. An elemental kind.”

And I tried as hard as I could to get over you, but really the only thing I needed was time.

“It takes a guy to get over a guy,”

making yourself available means putting the relationship you’re in first. Not necessarily always, but often.

Relationships aren’t always equal. The balance is forever shifting. Who loves whom more, who needs whom more.

The way people interpret a situation often says more about them than it does about the situation.

i like my body when it is with your body.

We’d both changed, but in ways that made us more compatible instead of less so.

My head feels so good on your chest. So right. It always has.

He wanted to share stories across borders, across boundaries, across races and religions. And he did. But he gave his life for it.

I hope that you find a love like that—one that is all-consuming and powerful, that makes you feel like you’re going slightly mad. And if you do find that love, embrace it. Hold on to it. When you give yourself over to love like that, your heart will get bruised. It will get battered. But you will also feel invincible and infinite.