Do you still remember how to do this? Or did you need me to feed you?” I stab a piece of tofu and point it in his direction. “Say ah. The tofu choo choo is coming.” “One more joke, Kishimoto, and I will remove your spine.
I chained the terrified little girl of my past in some unknowable dungeon inside of me where she and her fears had been carefully stored, sealed away. Her memories, suffocated. Her anger, ignore. I do not speak to her. I don’t dare look in her direction. I hate her. But right now I can hear her crying.
I do not have friends,” he says. “Why can’t you try?” He shakes his head. “Why? Why not give it a chance – ” “Because I am afraid,” he finally says, voice shaking, “that your friendship would be the end of me.
If Ella were a house, she would be a grand home, one with many rooms and doors, all of which were easily unlocked, flung open. If I were a house, I would be haunted.
God, you’re so beautiful,” he said, his smile vanishing. “Even when you lie to me.
I hate you,” he whispered. Alizeh blinked, her heart pounding too hard in her chest. “I know.” He leaned in then, his throat working, his gaze fixed entirely on her mouth. “I hate everything about you. Your eyes. Your lips. Your smile.” His words grazed her skin when he said, softly, “I find your presence insufferable.
You think compassion costs nothing,” his grandfather said sharply. “You think sparing an innocent life is easy; that to do otherwise is an indication only of inhumanity. You do not yet realize that you possess the luxury of compassion because I have carried in your stead the weight of every cruelty, of every mercilessness necessary to ensuring the survival of millions.
She did not allow the opinions of others to dictate who she was.
Your name,” he said, and closed his eyes. He nearly fell over, catching himself at the last second. “I didn’t know your name for so long, angel. I love the way it feels in my mouth.
I’m very tired,” I say to him. “Please go directly to hell.
I worried that if I spoke or screamed my anger would grip both sides of my open mouth and rip me in half.
If you’re going to survive,” he says to me, “you can never be indifferent to your surroundings. You can’t depend on others to take care of you. You cannot presume that someone else will do things right.
Together” he whispers, “no matter what.
I have a great fear of drowning in the ocean of my own silence. In the steady thrum that accompanies quiet, my mind is unkind to me. I think too much. I feel, perhaps, far more than I should.
I’m the only one allowed to call her Ella now. It’s just for us. A tether to our shared history, a nod to our past, to the love I’ve always felt for her, no matter her name.
If I considered other people’s mediocre standards a sufficient metric by which to measure my own accomplishments, I’d have never amounted to anything.
What a lie appearances can be. What a terrible, terrible lie.
He has a hundred thousand million kisses and he’s giving them all to me.
I lived, always, on the uncertain plane of a hyphen.
She’s built her own family.