He’s in pain. I am, too. It strikes me that perhaps this is part of what we are fighting to choose. Which pain we feel.

Until now, I’ve never been able to see while I fly, and I feel a dizzying lightness as I look out at the land below us.Is this what I’ve missed?The stars have come to the...

I keep telling myself that, and most of the time I believe it.

Cassia.I know which life is my real one now, no matter what happens. It’s the one with you. For some reason, knowing that even one person knows my story makes things different. Maybe it’s like...

The only chance of success is to trust in your own power.

No,’ she says, as if the suggestion is ridiculous. ‘I wouldn’t go back to where I’m from. I’d go someplace I’ve never been.

Ky still looks at me and I wonder for a moment if he is going to ask me what I am thinking about. But of course, he doesn’t. He doesn’t learn things by asking questions…...

Writing, painting, singing- it cannot stop everything. Cannot halt death in its tracks. But perhaps it can make the pause between death’s footsteps sound and look and feel beautiful, can make the space of waiting...

Do not go gentle. So I fight. I fight the only way I know how.

Any other questions?””Just one,” I say. “What color are your eyes?” I want to know what he thinks, how he sees himself – the real Ky – when he dares to look.”Blue,” he says sounding...

But I didn’t see it. I believed him unchanging, a stone in all good senses of the word, solid, dependable, something and someone you could build upon. But he is as we all are: light...

This is a difficult balance, telling the truth: how much to share, how much to keep, which truths will wound but not ruin, which will cut too deep to heal.

So I fight. I fight the only way I know, with thinking of Ky, even thought the pain of missing him is so strong I can hardly stand it… I think of him, I think...

Everyone has something of beauty about them. But loving lets you look, and look, and look again. You notice the back of a hand, the turn of a head, the way of a walk. When...

She’s right. We would compose poems about love and tell stories that have been heard in some form before. But it would be our first time feeling and telling.

He’s throwing everything he can into the air on the chance that something might take flight. And we’re the smallest, weakest bird.

at first when the rain fell from the sky so wide and deepit smelled like sage, my favorite smellI went up on the plateau to watch it cometo see the gifts it always broughtbut this...

I could write paper people and I would love them too; I could make them almost real.

It could have been different,” I say, almost under my breath. If I’d kissed Indie again after she kissed me. If I hadn’t known Cassia before I met Indie.”But it’s not,” Indie says, and she’s...

You cannot change your journey if you are unwilling to move at all.

They were too much to carryso i left them behindfor a new life, in a new placebut no one forgot who i wasi didn’tand neither did the people who watchthey watched for yearsthey watch now

He watches the sun out of the world and the stars into it and sometimes I wonder if he watches the sun come up again. Is it hard to sleep when you know you are...

I love.The most reckless thing of all.

Writing, painting, singing–it cannot stop everything. Cannot halt death in its tracks. But perhaps it can make the pause between death’s footsteps sound and look and feel beautiful, can make the space of waiting a...

I know how it feels when people look right through you, or worse, see you as something or someone other than what you are.

Growing apart doesn’t change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side; our roots will always be tangled. I’m glad for that.

Some people think the stars must look closer from up here. They don’t. When you’re up here, you realize how distant they really are—how impossible to reach.

The rain turns lighter, turns to snow. And I have a sense that we have not yet arrived, that we are still reaching. For each other. For who we are meant to be.

I want to reach out and grab his hand and hold it to me, right over my heart, right where it aches the most. I don’t know if doing that would heal me or make...

Good-bye,” I say to Grandfather, and to my father, and I hold the tube in the river and pause a moment. We hold the choices of our fathers and mothers in our hands and when...

Blue is the most common eye color in Oria Province, but there is something different about his eyes and I’m not sure what it is. More depth? I wonder what he sees when he looks...

I love you.”lightning. Once it has forked, hot-white, from sky to earth, there is no going back.It’s time. I feel it, I know it. My eyes on him, his on me, and both of us...

Sometimes paper is only paper,” my mothers says. “Words are just words. Ways to capture the real thing. Don’t be afraid to remember that.”I know what she means. Writing, painting, singing–it cannot stop everything. Cannot...

What are the gifts given to we who live Below?””Long life, health, strength, and happiness.””What is the curse of those who live Above?””Short life, illness, weakness, and misery.””Is this fair?””It is fair. It is as...

Sometimes you can’t speak, not because others won’t let you, but because you are afraid of what you’ll say.

She wraps her arms around me and speaks in my ear. Words just for me–the poetry of I love you–to keep me warm in the cold. With them she turns me back from ash and...

In a story, you can turn to the front and begin again and everyone lives once more. That doesn’t work in real life. And I love my real people the most.

It strikes me that perhaps this is part of what we are fighting to choose. Which pain to feel.

In that way, he was a true rebel. I think that’s why he chose that argument with your father as his favorite memory. Though he was upset when the fight happened, later he came to...

If you stay here, you become lost. And no one can find you. I like lost.

That’s how I know they are dreams. Because the simple and plain and everyday things are the ones that we can never have. (Cassia Reyes)

At first, that’s who I was. I wanted to know more about this boy who lives among us, but who never truly speaks… But now I feel like finding out about him is one of...

Once you want something, everything changes. Now I want everything. I feel it so much that I am water, a river of want,pooled in the shape of a girl.

Lightning. Once it has forked, hot-white, from sky to earth, there is no going back

I’ll go over again and again until I’ve finally crossed to where he is

Because I feel no anger toward my mother. Only loss, and loss is a feeling you can’t fight your way out of as easily.

And I do not know how I can feel this much pain and survive, and at the same time know how much I have to live.

I never needed the Society,” she says, “to Match me.” (-Lei)

I’m so tired.Once, I wanted to watch the floods coming into a canyon, to stand on the edge and see it happen, on ground that was safe but shaking. I’d like to hear the trees...

Love changes what is probable and makes unlikely things possible.