I write thank-you notes the minute I throw the wrapping paper away.
Some things don’t last forever, but some things do.
And to know me, as you have discovered, is to love me.
It took a lot of work to be perfect.
This was our common ground, the secret we shared but never spoke aloud.
Then I’d crawl back into bed, smelling her all around me, and tell myself that next time, I would lock that window. But I never did.
Who knew three dots could make such a difference? Like everything else, a love or a wish or whatever, it was all in the way you read it.
If there was a way to recognize something you’d never seen but still knew by heart, I felt it as I looked at his face. Finally, someone understood.
This felt right. Not just leaving, but how I was doing it. Without regret, without second guessing. And with Wes right there, holding the door open for me as I walked out into the light.
She bought seeds and raided nurseries and mulched and composted and spent full days with her hands full of earth, coaxing life our of the dry, dull grass my father had spent years pushing a mower over.
Don’t give me no rotten tomato, ’cause all I ever wanted was your sweet potato.
Like so many before them, they didn’t care that my dad was only the messenger. They still wanted to shoot him.
So you should remember that, when you’re thinking about what other people can deal with. Maybe it’s not so bad.
All I’d wanted for so long was for someone to explain everything that had happened to me in this same way. To label it neatly on a page: this leads to this leads to this.
Like a blinking cursor on an empty page, it was just the first thing. The beginning of the beginning. But at least it was done.
Together, we looked down at the tiny house, the sole thing on this vast, flat surface. Like the only person living on the moon. It could be either lonely or peaceful, depending on how you looked at it. “It’s a start,” I said.
How it felt to have the world moving beneath me, a hand gripping mine, knowing if I fell, at least I wouldn’t do it alone.
Sometimes, you get things right the first time. Others, the second. But the third time, they say, is the charm.
But all the love in the world won’t save a sinking ship. You have to either bail or jump overboard.
Says the girl with no thyme.