Things that stick with me: blue bird, all my tears be washed away, silence of the seas, mother’s cry, desire to be held, safe, underground supermarkets, kidnappings, masochism and david goliath, observationalist writing, huck finn / father.

His abuse? Or your weakness?

Everything new gets old.

All the things that I did, you need to understand. I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. I was alive.

The view from halfway down. There is no other side.

He’s So Stupid, He Doesn’t Realize How Miserable He Should Be. I Envy That.

Same Thing That Always Happens. You Didn't Know Me And Then You Fell In Love With Me. And Now You Know Me.

There are boxes of clementines in the kitchen and the thing is that I love you again.

I see no future with you.

You’re a failure. You are worthless, waste of time, waste of space, waste of energy, waste of 18 years of effort and hope. Maybe you should go kill yourself.

Call me what you want, call me what you need.

My father once told me: Sometimes, you have to sacrifice your favorite chapter to save the book.

You are in everything I do. Every thought I have. You are somehow intertwined. Every single thing that I do. Somehow comes back to you.

And when nobody wakes you up in the morning, and when nobody waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever you want. What do you call it, freedom, or loneliness?

The truth is: The first few times I saw him shake from weakness, blinking the tears from his eyes, I felt nothing. Maybe even a sense of power, of validation that he cared. I felt hints of guilt, a breach of duty, sense of moral responsibility, but the deep sadness only struck me looking backwards. I never loved him during the relationship, but I loved him deeply during the months following our breakup. We were two best friends who had grown up together, roots intertwined. We had discovered worlds, dreamed up empires together. And it broke my heart that those two little kids would one day become strangers.

At night I dream that you and I are two plants that grow together, roots intertwined.

I want to go to sleep with you tucked inside my arms, like a little bird safe in its nest. I want to wake up with you by my side, all bright eyed with excitement for the great things we can achieve. I want to wake briefly in a haze in the middle of the night, reaching instinctively for your body. I want to envelop you with me, I want you to snuggle up against my chest, knowing that this time it will be home forever.

There was something quiet and peaceful, yet fully joyful about this. He crossed her mind often, blossomed there like a flower in gentle bloom, yet he didn't cling, engulf, strangle, loom, the way she'd been used to. He would come and go like a funny animal in the clouds, there for a moment of awe, but not lingering long enough to invite a storm. She didn't quite know what he was to her- his smile, his carefree and curious energy, reached out to her inner child, inviting her out to play. His calmness, his unmoving intention to understand felt like the shelter she'd sought but never found in her father. Somehow, she felt like she'd known him for a long time, but couldn't quite remember from where.

I remember that night, how your cry rang hollow through the house and chilled me to the bone.

There is a kind of grief that empties your throat. A kind of scream that makes no sound. We keep crying out, don’t we? Once when you saw father’s skull deflated like a balloon, again when you saw pictures of your mother’s coffin hours after you’d talked to her, more times, silently, with your eyes, when he screams at you and you beg him to stop but he won’t, he can’t. You drown, and I drown with you.