A Thousand Letters (The Austens #2)

by Staci Hart

A shot of adrenaline is all it takes, triggered by a thought. A word. A memory. And every time the reaction is singular, a fingerprint of a moment.

Sometimes it’s a flutter, a flicker of wings in your chest. Others, it’s a relentless vise that stops the beat, if only for a second. It might be a hot burn, spreading like wildfire in your ribs, or an icy cold space, empty and void.

"There are no sorrys, not for anyone. Especially not for you. Everything in its time. Now let the night be dark for all of me / Let the night be too dark for me to see / Into the future. Let what will be, be."

For every breath And every beat of my heart Carries me farther away From you.

The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

It would seem neither of us had escaped the other unscathed.

To make the best Of what you have: A small comfort In a big world. -M. White

Burned down And singed, Razed to ash And blown to the wind.

Thin soul, Stretched and pulled Left to bear the weight Of the world On its own. -M. White

To bend, Breath still, Heart stretched, Is strength In weakness.

When we're all together, things are … harder."

"Because fighting with them is futile. There's no convincing them of anything. Their worlds are so small, and that's all they know.

The only thing loud about me were my eyes, dark and shining, heavy with all the things I didn't say, and I wondered if there would ever come a day where I'd let all those words free.

Here (Not there, not far) Now (Not then, not ago) You will find a way To love.

And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need Of aid from them--She was the Universe.

He asked us questions, prompting us, guiding us even when we should be caring for him, knowing we didn't know what to say, what to do. There was too much in the air, too much between us, too many things we weren't ready to talk about, and I felt the pressure, the need to make every second count, every question, every breath and heartbeat. I wanted to tell him all my fears. I wanted to take away his.

But I found myself unable to say much of anything as we talked about the mundane, the meaningless, the nothings of our lives. All that in a moment we should have spent in the truth, not hiding behind cordiality.

The falsity of it all sank into my hear...

There were all of a sudden too many people in the room. Too many things to say. It wasn't real, nothing was real or meaningful. Life was cruel, and we were caught in the web of it, helpless.

"People keep saying that, and I don't really understand what it means. It's empty, meaningless, something to say when there's nothing to say."

Wade hadn't moved, but as I backed away, he reached for me blindly, grabbing my hand, pulling me back. And I sank to my knees next to him, our fingers twined together; we existed only in our grief.

In that grief, time moved without purpose, an absent ticking from somewhere in the room, meaning nothing to us as we were swept away. The surge of emotion overwhelmed us, and when it ebbed, it pulled back through the sand with a whisper, taking us with it.

"You're what I give to the world, what I leave behind. I am proud." He said it slowly, every word with intention, with concentration, as if it were the most important thing he'd ever say. "Now, we have truth. Hold onto it."

I found a glimmer of hope caressing the moon.

Hurt is so easy, Loss so simple In its complexity, And to fall into The arms of the dark Is effortless. - M. White

And she was there, by my side, as lost and broken as we all were, backing away, trying to disappear again when she held a place next to us. I couldn't let her do it, couldn't let her shrink away. So I stopped her, took her hand not knowing that it was me who needed her.

Above they barely touch, but undermined / Down to their deepest source, / Admiring you shall find / Their roots are intertwined / Insep'rably."

"We all did. But do not regret that. That is one thing I will ask of you. For of all sad words of tongue or pen, / The saddest are these: It might have been! Stop running away so you don't spend the rest of your life wondering. Whittier knew this, and so do I. So should you."

I'd been running for seven years, and there could be no full stop. There would be no sixty-to-zero, not without slowing down first or my brakes would catch on fire. But I thought about that crack in the wall again, and looking through it, I found the smallest hope.

The silence wasn't companionable; it was heavy with years and words between us, and it stretched on so long, there seemed to be no breeching it gracefully. It was the collective story of us in a twenty-minute span of footsteps.

"Braveness isn't always loud. Sometimes it's silent. There's braveness in sacrifice and kindness. It's in doing a thing that needs to be done, even though it's hard, and even though it hurts."

A flash of relief hit me at the thought of submission; I imagined yielding to her would be to breathe again, knocking the dust from my lungs. Just the illusion of that comfort was transcendent.

But it was just that — an illusion, a falsity, fictitious and fabricated by my desire to find my way back to the fantasy of her.

Home is not a place, Not a smell, Not a face, But a space In your heart. -M. White

"The things I do for love."

"Define disaster. Like, trip-and-fall-with-a-side-of-accidental-groping disaster? Or like a why-did-you-break-my-heart-and-ruin-my-life kind of disaster?"

And when you think That you have found Your feet planted firmly And your heart sound That is when the moment You trip, Fall, And hit the ground. -M. White

Maybe he was better for her. He was here, after all, available. I was unavailable, and I would be leaving again. Always leaving. If she cared about him, I'd let her be. There would be no telling her how I felt, not if she was happy. I wouldn't get in the way of her happiness.

The in-between The purgatory Of floating Like vapor And mist Uncontained. -M. White

I'd murder a room full of kids — wouldn't last a week."

But really, I'd rather be at the bike shop amidst the smell of rubber and grease."

It sounds like you're saying that because I don't stand up to them that I'm weak. But here's the thing — there's no point. Arguing will not change their behavior, and it helps no one, especially not me. I don't suffer very often because I don't let them hurt me. My being present is a choice. My enduring their judgment is a choice. My choice, and therein lies my power.

In the darkness In the cold grip of night When the light disappears And the shadows swallow the sharp edges This is where The truth lies.

Futility. That was the thing I felt the most.

"It's been hard to know the right way to handle things, even small things, even things that have nothing to do with me.

But could we build on top of the wreckage of our past, or would it all fall apart, unstable and broken? There was only one way to know — I had to try.

Something had changed — Was it me? Was it her? — and I felt caught up in her at the prospect of forgiveness. I knew everything that stood between us, and yet it felt inconsequential, simple, a crack rather than a chasm.