Where They Lie (Nora McTavish, #1)

by Joe Hart

Those moments of suspension. Before the reality hit. The half second before pain registered when you sliced yourself with a knife. Stepping off a stair expecting the floor and finding nothing but empty air.

The truth was the system was deeply flawed because people were. The law is one size fits all, while reality is a series of chaotic events we raft through like white water. The difference is some people get handed life jackets while others are told they should’ve learned how to swim better.

Someone once said we don’t have a justice system, we have a legal system.

We forget how young some people are when they start carrying weight beyond their years, then wonder why they struggle.

The first cup of coffee tasted like a second one,

We all want to be strong, and being strong is being right.

When you didn’t have opportunity, hope could become chains.

We’re told a life without pain is ideal. To avoid suffering as much as possible. But pain is where you grow.

Sometimes trauma is a knife, sometimes it’s stitches.

Tragedy should mean something, but mostly it doesn’t. Some people were broken, and they broke others. The ones left behind picked up the pieces and carried on. If they could. There was heartache and damage, but we carried on.

I was speared by the words—my own thoughts spoken out loud by the only person I loved. Was there anything more powerful?

The subconscious is a serious person with a clipboard and a list. It observes and checks boxes, scribbles little notes in the margins of our thoughts. It watches and catalogs and hopes the person in which it resides can’t possibly be as dense as they seem.

There are no words for what we do to each other. No words for what we are. Human beings are the strongest and weakest part of the world. And when they break, they shatter everything around them.