Alone with You in the Ether

by Olivie Blake

you learn a new word, you suddenly see it everywhere. The mind comforts itself by believing this to be coincidence but it isn’t—it’s ignorance falling away. Your future self will always see what your present self is blind to. This is the problem with mortality, which is in fact a problem of time.

There was nothing worse than being predictable. Nothing smaller than feeling ordinary. Nothing more disappointing than being reminded she was both.

Because people want to be romantic about everything, they want to give names to the stars, they want to tell stories. Love is a story, that’s all, until she fights with him for the first time.

She proved herself alive by proving this day had never been lived before, that this thing had never been felt or never tasted or never wanted, and now, because it existed, things were different; changed.

underneath it all, the little monster that was her soul was

An ending is only an ending, she thought, when both parties agree they’ve reached the end.

Because we have agreed, collectively, that to proceed without knowledge or understanding is a stupid kind of bravery, an impulsive kind of blindness, but that to be alone without wonder or curiosity is to chip away any possible value we might discover in existing.”