I know humans have been kissing since the history of time, but right now, in this very moment, it feels like kissing is a secret that only Roman and I know about.

My breath catches when I reach the last page, the drawing of me. The girl I'm staring at is not me, but she is me. Her large eyes are focused away from the viewer, but there's something in them I don't immediately recognize: hope. Her posture looks straighter than mine, like she's stronger, more resilient.

I need it [the sketch of me] to remind myself that I can be this girl, that this girl is inside of me. This hopeful, strong person.

I wonder if we feel those transformations, if we can sense our kinetic energy fizzling away into nothingness. I wonder if we hear it, if it sounds like the symphony or if it sounds like screaming.

It's funny how figuring out the gravitational pull of a random object can make you feel more grounded.

I wonder what my energy will do after I die. I wonder if your energy will really outlast us.

Newsflash: you aren't your dad. And you should stop blaming everyone else for what he did. Yourself included.

People are funny. The longer you are around them, the more you start to realize that everyone makes the same motions over and over again. We all want to believe that every day is different, that every day we change, but really, it seems that certain things are coded into us from the very beginning

I think of my black slug, slithering around, slurping up my potential energy for joy. I press my hand to my stomach and desperately wish that it didn't exist.