The Things We Leave Unfinished

by Rebecca Yarros

It’s about love and overcoming adversity through what can be considered a universal experience.”

“I got more than I could have dreamed of by marrying you. We’ll figure everything else out together.”

“I don’t know. But for these minutes, we breathe. Once

that’s done, we’ll take on the next.” Maybe by then, she’d have the answer.

“I love you so much that my heart feels like it beats within your body.

I know that I’m not strong enough to lose you. I won’t survive it.”

“There’s a warning, a sound your heart makes the first time it realizes it’s no longer safe with the person you trusted.”

“It’s not as clean or impersonal as a break or a shatter. Besides, those are easy to repair if you can find all the pieces. Truly crushing a soul—now that requires a certain level of…personal violence. Your ears fill with this desperate”—flip— “rasping”—flip—“gasp. Like you’re fighting for air, suffocating in plain sight. Strangled by life and someone else’s shitty, selfish decisions.”

“you don’t always recognize that wet sound for what it is—an assassination. You don’t register what’s actually happening as the air disappears. You hear that gurgle, and it somehow convinces you that the next breath is coming—you’re not broken. This is fixable, right? So you fight, holding on to whatever air there is.”

“You fight and you thrash because this fated, deep-rooted thing you called love refuses to go down with a single shot. That would be far too merciful. Real love has to be choked out, held under the water until it stops kicking. That’s the only way to kill it.”

“And once you finally get it, finally stop fighting, you’re too far gone to get to the surface to save yourself. And the spectators tell you to keep swimming, that it’s only a broken heart, but that little flicker that’s left of your soul can’t even float, let alone tread water. So you’re left with a choice.

You either let yourself die while they accuse you of being weak or you learn to breathe the goddamn water, and then they call you a monster for what you become. Ice Queen, indeed.”

I wanted her trust simply so I could prove I was worthy of it.

“A love like the two of you share doesn’t die so easily,”