The Society wants us to be afraid of dying. But I’m not. I’m only afraid of dying wrong.

But loving let’s you look, and look, and look again. You notice the back of a hand, the turn of a head, the way of a walk.

Inside me are the real things that give me strength—my thoughts, the small stones of my own choosing. They tumble in my mind, some polished from frequent turning, some new and rough, some that cut.

It was a little thing, a baby tree, but still it tangled with things around it and required care to move. And when she pulled it out, it’s roots still clung to Earth from it’s...

Now that I’ve found the way to fly, which direction should I go into the night?

For one entire day I let his kiss burn on my cheek and into my blood and I don’t push the memory away… This kiss, these words, they feel like beginning.

And it is strange that absence can feel like presence.

In the end you can’t always choose what to keep. You can only choose how you let it go.

I can trust in my parents’ love. And it strikes me that is a big thing to trust, a big thing to have had, no matter what else happens.

I don’t know what happens after we die. It doesn’t seem to me like there can be much past this. But I suppose I can conceive that what we make and do can last beyond...

Because in the end you can’t always choose what to keep. You can only choose how to let it go.

If you love someone, if someone loved you, if they taught you to write and made it so you could speak, how can you do nothing at all? You might as well take their words...

We need you.””I’m sorry, but I can’t let that keep me here anymore.

For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey between footsteps makes up our lives.

Thank you,” I tell Xander. “I didn’t get anything for you -“”It’s all right,” he says, “but maybe – you could -“He looks into my eyes and I know what he wants. A kiss. Even...

Everyone dies. The don’t all have the chance to see what they wanted most. At least I’ve seen the Above. At least I’ve known True.

Was [Sisyphus] from your province?’I don’t know. I don’t know if he’s real,’ Ky says. ‘If he ever existed.”Then why tell his story?’ I don’t understand, and for a second I feel betrayed. Why did...

It is strange how we hold on to the pieces of the past while we wait for our futures.

They could not write their names, but I can write mine, and I will again, somewhere where it will last for a long, long time. I will find Ky, and then I will find that...

It gets harder and steeper, but not impossible.

It’s been so long since I’ve let myself feel anger that I don’t just feel it. It covers my mouth and I swallow it down, the taste sharp and metal as though I’m gnawing through...

It dances on the air for a moment before it falls, too. A fresh gust of wind almost saves it, but a worker catches sight of it and lifts a tube up to suck the...

Isn’t it funny how the memories you cherish before a breakup can become your worst enemies afterwards? The thoughts you loved to think about, the memories you wanted to hold up to the light and...

Ever since the day of the mistake with my Match. I’ve never known which life is my true one. Even with the reassurances of the Offical that day in the greenspace, I think a part...

…there’s a difference between knowledge and technology. Knowledge don’t fail us.

People can be miracles.

I can’t help being happy. I’m alive.

I wonder if I will ever have the strength to hold onto something. Or if I will always be someone who destroys.

So much of life is in the smallness of moments…but they are harder to mark. So we need the grander celebrations and occasions. People like to feel significant

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...