We are, each one of us for the other, a key to a door that otherwise would’ve remained locked forever.
I go up to The Sanctum and put on the most obnoxious head-banging punk music I have, a San Francisco band called Filth.
Grief is forever. It doesn’t go away; it becomes a part of you, step for step, breath for breath... Grief and love are conjoined, you don’t get one without the other.
He has his arms out like wings and is turning around and around, the wind rippling his clothes, the glow of the fire lighting him up like a phoenix.
So much love is filling my chest, it may explode.
I want to go!” I explode. “I don’t want a tamped-down spirit!” I realize these are the first words I’ve uttered outside my head this entire meal. Mom beams at me. He cant talk her out of this. There are no surftards there, I know it. Probably only kids whose blood glows. Only revolutionaries.
Doesn’t he know popular people aren’t revolutionaries?
His nose is like a capsized ship, his mouth the size of three, his jaw and cheekbones hefty as armor, and his eyes are iridescent. His face is a room overstuffed with massive furniture.
My heart’s bigger than a blue whale’s, which needs its own parking spot.
Love’s so complicated, Noah, isn’t it?” I.
The stars have bewitched the sky of darkness.
He smiles wildly, looks like love itself stuffed into a pair of jeans, black T-shirt, and backward baseball cap.
So we grapple with the mysteries, each in our own way. And some of us get to float around on one of them and call it home.
Man overboard,” he murmurs, wrapping me up in his arms and we’re laughing and then the laughing dies out because who knew kissing could be like this, could so alter the landscape within, tipping over oceans, sending rivers up mountains, unpouring the rain.
Meeting your soul mate is like walking into a house you’ve been in before.
Heathcliff and Cathy, like Lady Chatterley and Oliver Mellors, like Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet!
I nodded and something really big and bright in me crushed to nothing in an instant. I’m pretty sure it was my soul.
You can’t help who you love, can you?
The music continues its fiery revolution all around us and there is a girl inside of me that wants to give in to the fanatical beat – she wants to dance wild and free all around the thumping, but unfortunately, that girl’s in me, not me.
It’s about magic.” He shakes his head. “How could I have forgotten that?