The Honeys

by Ryan La Sala

Death isn’t the end of a life, but the division of it. When someone dies, their soul scatters into all the things they’ve ever given away. Love. Bruises. Gifts. You struggle to piece together what’s left—even the things that hurt—just to feel haunted.

she relaxes like I’ve just spared her life. I suppress an eye roll. I’m gender fluid, not a grenade.

Well im both lol

Maybe it’s my own demons that are filling in all the blank stares.

There are a few explanations for my sudden, nauseating reverie—grief, I have learned, cracks us into pieces that make all sorts of strange, alarming shapes—

People go missing in the mountains too often.

People dont wnna listen bro

There’s also a large plaque over the entrance that says: INVITE THE OUTSIDE … IN!

Oh no honey

I want to scream, but the thing about screaming is you have to let yourself breathe first. And I won’t. The air will taste like warm skin.

reminds me of all the people who approached me after Caroline died and asked, again and again, What can I do to help? As if I could tell them. As if it was my job, my burden, to ask.

Exhausting shit

But it’s clear people underestimate you.” I have known this literally my whole life. People decide they know everything about me the second they see me, and then reward themselves when I prove them wrong.

Bloop

It sounds hollow. So practiced. I mean every word but all I hear are the flat apologies of the people who tried to comfort me. I wonder if maybe I heard them wrong.

His whole world sits atop nostalgia for a place that never existed for me. I could peer into that world; it showed in the smiles and joy of the kids around me, but it wasn’t mine. It wasn’t meant for me. And I knew it for a long time before the incident with the victory board. I knew it, and I fought to stay anyway, because I thought Aspen was going to be like the rest of my life. A battle I just had to keep winning.

Me with the yoga industry merp

“You’re a bit of an evil genius, aren’t you, Mars?” I smile. “I believe you were the one who told me that there’s nothing evil about doing what you’ve got to do to survive.”

On oppressed resistance

The more they know, the less they like me,

Yup

It’s not often that I feel invited to begin with, and even rarer that I feel welcomed enough to stay. I’ve learned to never test any group’s hospitality. Patience like that is finite for someone like me, and it’s dangerous to indulge in it.

This book keeps dragging me

“I’m not hurting people,” Mimi pouts. “I’m hurting boys.”

Ok jennifer check lmaoooo

“Death isn’t the end,” she says. “It’s just when we become everything else.”