Shatter Me (Shatter Me, #1)

by Tahereh Mafi

I hate the sun, too preoccupied with itself to notice the infinite hours we spend in its presence. The sun is an arrogant thing, always leaving the world behind when it tires of us.

The moon is a loyal companion. It never leaves. It’s always there, watching, steadfast, knowing us in our light and dark moments, changing forever just as we do. Every day it’s a different version of itself. Sometimes weak and wan, sometimes strong and full of light. The moon understands what it means to be human. Uncertain. Alone. Cratered by imperfections.

I sit by the window and watch the rain and the leaves and the snow collide. They take turns dancing in the wind, performing choreographed routines for unsuspecting masses.

Truth is a jealous, vicious mistress that never ever sleeps, is what I don’t tell him. I’ll never be okay.

My eyes are pressed down by the weight of the bright light and I can’t see through more than two slits, but the warm rays wash over my body like a jacket fitted to my form, like the hug of something greater than a human. I could stand still in this moment forever. For one infinite second I feel free.

My eyes are 2 professional pickpockets, stealing everything to store away in my mind.

I spent my life folded between the pages of books. In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.

Hate looks just like everybody else until it smiles. Until it spins around and lies with lips and teeth carved into the semblance of something too passive to punch.

Warner drops the gun on my plate. The silence gives it space to clatter around the universe and back.

I pretend time is a broken hourglass bleeding seconds through sand.

“Life is a bleak place,” he whispers. “Sometimes you have to learn how to shoot first.”

I’m feeling stupid. I’m feeling brave because I’m feeling stupid. My words wear no parachutes as they fall out of my mouth.

His smile is laced with dynamite. “Go to sleep.” “Go to hell.” He works his jaw. Walks to the door. “I’m working on it.”

Can I even tell you how much I love Aaron. No I can't. I love him too much!

Hope is hugging me, holding me in its arms, wiping away my tears and telling me that today and tomorrow and two days from now I will be just fine and I’m so delirious I actually dare to believe it.

I can shoot a hundred numbers through the chest and watch them bleed decimal points in the palm of my hand. I can rip the numbers off a clock and watch the hour hand tick tick tick its final tock just before I fall asleep. I can suffocate seconds just by holding my breath. I’ve been murdering minutes for hours and no one seems to mind.

The sun is slipping through the sky and tripping toward the edge of the earth.

“Laughter comes from living.” I shrug, try to sound indifferent. “I’ve never really been alive before.”

Seasons change. Stars explode. Someone is walking on the moon.

I’ve run out of words. My pockets are full of letters I can’t string together and I’m so desperate to say something that I say nothing and my heart is about to burst through my chest.

This is technically about Adam but we can pretend it is about Aaron ;p

My stomach is a flimsy crepe, my heart a raging woodpecker, my blood a river of anxiety.

I’ve searched the world for all the right words and my mouth is full of nothing.

My legs are screaming against the pain, but I push them faster anyway. My lungs are sawing my rib cage in half, but I force them to process oxygen anyway.

I’m too poor to afford the luxury of hysteria right now.

The night sky is a vat of tar suffocating the world around us.

My mind is a warehouse of carefully organized human emotions. I can almost see my brain as it functions, filing thoughts and images away. I lock away the things that do not serve me. I focus only on what needs to be done: the basic components of survival

It’s like there are a million screams caught inside of my chest but I have to keep them all in because what’s the point of screaming if you’ll never be heard and no one will ever hear me in here. No one will ever hear me again.

We lived in those stories for a while. We followed the tale laid out for us, the prose pinned down in every square foot of space we’d acquired. We were content with the plot twists that only mildly redirected our lives. We signed on the dotted line for the things we didn’t know we cared about. We ate the things we shouldn’t, spent money when we couldn’t, lost sight of the Earth we

Exactly what is happening to our Earth right now... How sad.