Father used to say that change took time, but he was wrong. It did not take any time at all to change me. The glimpse of a family. A beautiful tale. A child’s tears. A confession. A wound. An honest opinion. A friend’s betrayal. One parent’s death and another’s embrace. A touch – an instant slapping you with its light and jolting you back, shaken and blinking. Those quick moments were what changed people.

The story was heavy in her hands, the book spread open like legs, the letters very small i spite of describing such a big moment.

The evil world expected me to curl up in a corner like a seashell – silent and small and breakable – forgetting that a seashell held the roar of an entire ocean inside it. I didn’t need a voice, only my teeth and my dreams to save me.

I forgive you because you matter. You can wreck me, and I’ll still forgive you.

Putting her mind to it, Love would become familiar with his body. She would know him from top to bottom, from beginning to end. Touching this boy would be the death, and life, of her. She.

She wants to store the sound of him in a jar and carry it everywhere she goes.

The greatest courage a person can have is to love another, for there are only two outcomes. Either the love lasts, and our lives are compromised, or it doesn’t, and our lives are emptied. Either way, we suffer more than we celebrate. I’ve enjoyed suffering with you. We are a tale for campfires. That is all. That is everything.

You’re brave. You’ll get right back up and try again. It would be a shame not to, because even the birds have to risk crashing before they can fly.

It was our wishes and wills, our hopes and actions, that gave us life – that shaped it.

I used to think, what did it mean to say farewell? Was it enough to say that word once? Or must one say it endlessly, repeatedly, throughout life? Did one live forever with farewell on their shoulders, on the brink of their lips? Did we ever recover enough to truly say farewell?