The Sky Is Everywhere

by Jandy Nelson

It’s as if someone vacuumed up the horizon while we were looking the other way.

My sister dies over and over again, all day long.

wonder why bereaved people even bother with mourning clothes when grief itself provides such an unmistakable wardrobe.

The guy’s life-drunk, I think, makes Candide look like a sourpuss. Does he even know that death exists?

That’s exactly it—I am crazy sad, and somewhere deep inside, all I want is to fly.

The Fontaine boys are like a litter of enormous puppies, rushing and swiping at each other, stumbling all around, a whirl of perpetual motion and violent affection.

I look into his sorrowless eyes and a door in my heart blows open. And when we kiss, I see that on the other side of that door is sky.

“That’s a misconception, Lennie, the sky is everywhere, it begins at your feet.”

I know the expression love bloomed is metaphorical, but in my heart in this moment, there is one badass flower, captured in time-lapse photography, going from bud to wild radiant blossom in ten seconds flat.

He’s listening to me so carefully, like he wants to catch my words in his hands as they fall from my lips.

But what if I’m a shell-less turtle now, demented and devastated in equal measure, an unfreakingbelievable mess of a girl, who wants to turn the air into colors with her clarinet, and what if somewhere inside I prefer this? What if as much as I fear having death as a shadow, I’m beginning to like how it quickens the pulse, not only mine, but the pulse of the whole world.

Each time someone dies, a library burns. I’m watching it burn right to the ground.

like a small seashell with the loneliness of the whole ocean roaring invisibly within.

interpretative, the storytelling aspect of life, of my life. I always felt like I was in a story, yes, but not like I was the author of it, or like I had any say in its telling whatsoever. You can tell your story any way you damn well please. It’s your solo.

he’s so alive, he makes me feel like I could take a bite out of the whole earth.

How to get used to being without a boy who turns you into brightness?

messessentialism instead of existentialism: For those who revel in the essential mess that is life.

Because Gram’s right, there’s not one truth ever, just a whole bunch of stories, all going on at once, in our heads, in our hearts, all getting in the way of each other. It’s all a beautiful calamitous mess.

I try to fend off the oceanic sadness, but I can’t. It’s such a colossal effort not to be haunted by what’s lost, but to be enchanted by what was.