My eyes break open. Two shattered windows filling my mouth with glass.
Making magic is far more interesting than making sense.
Their friendship had changed seasons.
You realize then that anger is safer than kindness, that isolation is safer than community. You shut everything out. Everyone. But some days, no matter what you do, the pain gets so bad you’d bury yourself alive just to make it stop.
Adam hasn’t changed a bit. Still moody. No sense of humor. Generally irritated. Sometimes I can’t remember why we’re friends.
She wanted to go home, yes, and she wanted to spend more time with Father and she wanted to eat tulips and sit by the pond, but even after all the trials and tribulations of Furthermore – or perhaps because of them – she didn’t think she could ever go back to an ordinary life. She knew she’d never say no to adventure.
The world has not yet broken him. Such freedom in ignorance.
My parents were so generally unimpressed with their own children that I really believed I could, I don’t know, win something like a Nobel Peace Prize, and they’d only reluctantly attend the ceremony, all the while pointing out that lots of people won Nobel Prizes, that, in fact, they gave out Nobel Prizes every year, and anyway the peace prize was clearly the prize for slackers, so maybe next time I should focus my energy on physics or math or something.
I didn’t believe it was possible to hide a woman’s beauty. I thought women were gorgeous no matter what they wore, and I didn’t think they owed anyone an explanation for their sartorial choices. Different women felt comfortable in different outfits.
I am no longer afraid of fear, and I will not let it rule me. Fear will learn to fear me. EIGHTEEN Adam leads me toward the couch, but Kenji intercepts us.
I thought women were gorgeous no matter what they wore, and I didn’t think they owed anyone an explanation for their sartorial choices.
How many times will you apologize for who you are?
You’ve got a sexy voice. Makes everything sound naughty.
Kishimoto, if I considered other people’s mediocre standards a sufficient metric by which to measure my own accomplishments, I’d never have amounted to anything.” He looks up, meets my eyes. “You should demand more of yourself. You’re entirely capable.
I don’t think you do, actually. In fact, I hope you don’t. I wouldn’t want you to know how I feel right now. I wouldn’t wish that for you.” That hits me harder.
Somehow I can’t help but be reminded, all the time, of my own solitude.
Instead, I’m a big, raw, bleeding heart, and I spend my days pretending not to notice that I want more. That I need more.
I feel empty, like there is nothing inside of me but this broken heart, the only organ left in this shell. I feel the bleats echo within me, I feel the thumping reverberate around my skeleton. I have a heart, says science, but I am a monster, says society. And I know it, of course I know it. I know what I’ve done. I’m not asking for sympathy. But sometimes I think – sometimes I wonder – if I were a monster – surely, I would feel it by now?
We followed the tale laid out for us, the prose pinned down in every square foot of space we’d acquired. We were content with the plot twists that only mildly redirected our lives. We signed on the dotted line for the things we didn’t know we cared about. We ate the things we shouldn’t, spent money when we couldn’t, lost sight of the Earth we had to inhabit and wasted wasted wasted everything. Food. Water. Resources. Soon.
At least I’m honest about being a liar.
For me, today was just another first day of school in another new city, so I did what I always did when I showed up at a new school: I didn’t look at people. People were always looking at me, and when I looked back they often took it as an invitation to speak to me, and when they spoke to me they nearly always said something offensive or stupid or both and I’d decided a long time ago that it was easier to pretend they just didn’t exist.