What's Mine and Yours

by Naima Coster

Perhaps that was all Noelle had been doing with her life: collecting stars that never wanted to be collected in the first place.

Jade didn’t like when older women talked to her as if she were their child, as if being old gave them a pass to mother anyone they wanted. It was hard for her not to fight back whenever someone talked down to her in that motherly way. They’d mean to say, I’m looking after your own good, but it always seemed closer to You are no good.

She collected his laughter in her ears. It was the greatest accomplishment of her day.

he had this feeling that his life was being watched, that other people could see not only what he was doing, but into his mind. He tried to revise his thoughts, as if they were a soliloquy someone might overhear.

Maybe he was trying to beat the universe to the punch. He’d ruin his own life before it got snatched away from him.

Losing a parent was like losing a part of yourself, even if it was a part you’d rather forget.

Since she was a girl, she had been haunted by the sense that she was no one. It wasn’t a voice in her head; it wasn’t even a conscious thought, really. It was a feeling, like a blanket draped over her body to disappear her.

“It’s only our life if we say so. Otherwise it belongs to them.”

She didn’t want him to act out, but she didn’t want him to worry too much about how the world would see him either. He’d wind up only punishing himself. She wanted him to be free.

He was so used to saying things he didn’t mean just to get through a moment, to get someone to look away.

She was a mirror to reflect the image he had fashioned for himself.

She hadn’t thought about the conversations they had likely had in the dark, or all their mornings and afternoons together, the quiet hours they’d spent in the unceasing, secret waltz of marriage.

What had stuck with him was the feeling of being overpowered. He had been feeble, trapped. There was nothing he could do but give in. He remembered that.

Maybe there’s nothing I’ve ever held dearer than my own potential—the idea of it, the idea that I had to make good on all my luck, my life. But one day I’ll be fifty or a hundred, and all the things I’ve done, or could have done, won’t matter. No one will have anything to say about my potential, which doors are open to me, and which are closed. No one will remember me at all.

He was tired of everyone making excuses for grown-ups who didn’t know how to act.