This is what a small victory feels like. It feels like a little surprise and a lot of relief. It makes the past feel lighter and the future seem even lighter than that, if only for a moment. It feels like rightness winning. It feels like possibility.
Perhaps it never happened. Perhaps it happened while I was asleep. Most likely, there’s no signal event. There’s just the steady accumulation of ‘awhile’.
If she were running through the rye, if she were headed toward that abyss, I would grab hold with every ounce of my strength, with every scared beat of my heart, with every thought that could only be for her.
They have left the first stage of romance – the rhapsody of us. Where everything is you-me or me-you or a giddily tentative we. Now him and her are asserting themselves, each given a private, pensive depth. Within the rhapsody of us, Elijah could think, I don’t really know you, but I will. Now he is not so sure.
Fear of being alone. Fear of disrupting the arrangement of your life. A decision to settle for something that’s okay, because you don’t know if you can get any better. Or maybe there’s the irrational belief that it will get better, even if you know he won’t change.
Thoughts can follow you anywhere.
Going through the motions gives you plenty of time to examine the motions.
To feel such a longing for his own life, even as he’s living it – he wonders what that means.
I tried to shut myself down completely, put up my best screensaver personality to coast through the day. I didn’t want to see her. I was desperate to see her. I wanted to hold it together. I wanted to melt down right at her feet and scream, Look what you’ve done to me.
As long as we can conjure, who needs anything else? As long as we can agree on the magical lie and be happy, what more is there to ask for?
As a kid he wished for money or fame or toys or friends. More recent wishes were for so many other things, all of them synonymous with love or escape.
Can so much really happen in a night? The song was never really over, but now I have the ending – I don’t know how I’ll phrase it, but it will involve our returning, it will take in the strange pink light and the Sunday-morning quiet. Because this is us, and the song is her, and this time I’m going to use her name. Norah Norah Norah – no rhymes, really. Just truth.
Just listen to the music and paint. Follow the sound. Don’t think about rules. Don’t worry about getting it perfect. Just let the song carry you.” “But what about instructions?” “There are no other instructions.
His eyes are a little together, but man, are they green.
I am the people in the other cars, each with his or her own story but passing by too quickly to notice or understand.
They should be going to sleep, but good company is the enemy of sleep. We remember this feeling so acutely – the desire to linger away the hours with someone else, talking or holding or even just watching a movie. In those moment, the clock seems arbitrary, since you are setting your understanding of time to another, more personal measure.
Time is running out, but what is it running toward?
He kisses me back with a kiss like a smile.
This is how we understand. We wore your flaws. We wore your fears. We made your mistakes.
Under the table, I crossed my legs so hard it hurt. I was using all the strength it would take to run away, only to stay still.