Before You Knew My Name

by Jacqueline Bublitz

him. I will not be like my mother, who forgave any man who said sorry.

Feel this in my soul

Though camera filters are designed to hide the facts of the matter these days,

Sad truth

Little anchors, trinkets to remind her that she lives here now.

Maybe the people who appear brave are merely doing the thing they have to do.

Necessity

A person dies every nine minutes in New York City, but two babies are born in that same amount of time, so you never know if that ambulance is speeding toward life or death

I am tired of beautiful things making me sad.

Sometimes a person slips out of your life so easily, you wonder if they were ever really there to begin with.

Nobody knows I stuck my fingers in my mouth after they came to take her dead body away.

.....what

He has shown me who he is, and now I will show him the real me, too.

Was I always looking for someone to love me, pay attention to me, see me?

because surviving changes everything.”

the way you can really hurt someone, which is to not love them the way you said

I know what it’s like for the horror to follow you home.)

but it’s really the hours that change us.

they of all people would understand you can’t survive every situation on your own. That sometimes you need help to get up off the floor.

to the painful beauty loneliness can wrap around a person.

Come explore the boundaries with me, please. It gets lonely out here on my own.

to assume you are the cause of another person’s discomfort or disdain, when the reality is, we all show up with our night befores, our midnight hours and too-early mornings.

She will let the departed know they matter, especially those whose lives might otherwise be passed over.

it is exhilarating for Ruby to find herself in the middle of such rich, meaningful conversation, something she would have never thought possible with people she barely knows.

Who wants to be appreciated for all you would change about yourself?

Is our death fated? Do we have a predestined, inescapable end, or is it all just arbitrary?

No one lives just one life. We start and finish our worlds many times over.

Because a certain man had pretended to be someone else for too long,

Noah??? Father?

How do you hold your pain close and let it go at the very same time.

It is never just one life these men destroy.

No one ever ends up where they started from, but you do make it home, when the time is right.