How High We Go in the Dark

by Sequoia Nagamatsu

How do you say goodbye when you know you’ll be alive hundreds if not thousands of years after everyone you’ve ever known has died?

He comes to escape and remind himself what it feels like to belong among others who feel like they, too, don’t quite fit anywhere else.

He wonders what proportion of happy moments to sad ones is necessary for a person to sincerely want to keep living

I hate that when I do have the energy to go out, I get angry at all the people who didn’t get the plague or somehow walked away from it scot-free. I hate how the world is finally coming together to help the planet when I’m coming undone.

You told me sometimes people and places serve a purpose for a finite amount of time to help you think and grow and love and then you move on.

I wondered what I’d been doing at that exact moment, what pressing matter had kept me from picking up the phone and telling my family: I love you. I’m sorry. This is something I have to do.

My father used to say our planet and everyone on it was made of pure possibility and that’s what made us special, made us able to create, become anything we wanted.