You think that because I am unwanted, because I am neglected and-and discarded-“My voice inches higher with every word, the unrestrained emotions suddenly screaming through my lungs. “You think I don’t have a heart? You think I don’t feel? You think that because I can inflict pain, that i should? You’re just like everyone else....

Of course I remember you.” My voice is a strangled whisper. I squeeze my eyes shut. “You were the only one who ever looked at me like a human being.

For so many years I lived in constant terror of myself. Doubt had married my fear and moved into my mind, where it built castles and ruled kingdoms and reigned over me, bowing my will to its whispers until I was little more than an acquiescing peon, too terrified to disobey, too terrified to disagree....

My mind is a warehouse of carefully organized human emotions.I lock away the things that do not serve me.

Hate looks just like everybody else until it smiles. Until it spins around and lies with lips and teeth carved into the semblance of something too passive to punch.

You will not be alone, I say to them, spinning to see their faces. You don’t need to be afraid anymore. We want to take back our world. We want to save the lives of our family members, our friends. We want your children to have a chance at a better future. And we want...

While a part of me wants to know, another part of me is too exhausted to ask.

I can’t be my own person, if i constantly require someone else to hold me together.

This planet is a broken bone that didn’t set right, a hundred pieces of crystal glued together. We’ve been shattered and reconstructed, told to make an effort every single day to pretend we still function the way we’re supposed to. But it’s a lie, it’s all a lie.

And maybe if I can find a way to stop being scared, I’ll actually figure out how to make friends. To be strong. To stop wallowing in my own problems.

I force myself to lock away the fear.

Doubt had married my fear and moved into my mind, where it built castles and ruled kingdoms and reigned over me, bowing my will to its whispers until I was little more than an acquiescing peon, too terrified to disobey, too terrified to disagree..

There is nothing to fear. Nothing to worry about. Grieve nothing in this transitory world,” he says softly.

I can’t be my own person if I constantly require someone else to hold me together.

Lift your hips for me, love.

Oh God—”He kisses me again, this time stronger,desperate, like he has to have me, like he’s dying to memorize the feel of my lips against his own. The taste of him is making me crazy; he’s all heat and desire and peppermint and I want more. I’ve just begun reeling him in, pulling him into...

It’s the kind of kiss that inspires stars to climb into the sky and light up the world.

I’m oxygen and he’s dying to breathe.

Comamandering is not a word.It has letters, doesn’t it? Sounds like a word to me.

Nothing in this life will ever make sense to me but I can’t help but try to collect the change and hope it’s enough to pay for our mistakes.

Dear, sweet, beautiful girl,

I made so many promises when I arrived here.Now I’m not so sure. Now I’m worried. Now my mind is a traitor because my thoughts crawl out of bed every morning with darting eyes and sweating palms and nervous giggles that sit in my chest, build in my chest, threaten to burst through my chest,...

Because it’s so hard to be kind to the world when all you’ve ever felt is hate.

And I understand, for the first time, that I have the power to destroy everything.

Do you never get exhausted being so wholly unbearable?

So that’s it?” Kenji says. “You just like him for his personality, huh?””What?””All of this,” Kenji says, waving a hand in the air, “has nothing to do with him being all sexy and shit and him being able to touch you all the time?””You think Warner is sexy?””That is not what I said.

Hope.It’s like a drop of honey, a field of tulips blooming in the springtime. It’s a fresh rain, a whispered promise, a cloudless sky, the perfect punctuation mark at the end of a sentence. And it’s the only thing in the world keeping me afloat.

I’m trying to focus, telling myself these are just empty words, but I’m lying. Because somehow, just reading these words is too much; and the thought of her in pain is causing me an unbearable amount of agony.

I spent my life folded between the pages of books.In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all...

he says : ” please don’t shoot me for this ” and he kissed me .

I can do anything I want. Be with anyone I want. And it’ll be my choice.

I lived in a really dark place. I wasn’t safe in my own mind. I woke up every morning hoping to die and then spent the rest of the day wondering if maybe I was already dead because I couldn’t even tell the difference.

Please,” he says. “I’m begging you to stop.”I still. “I can’t stomach your pain,” he says. “I can feel it so strongly and it’s making me crazy- please,” he says to me. “Don’t be sad. Or hurt. Or guilty. You’ve done nothing wrong.” “I’m sorry-“”Don’t be sorry, either,” he says. “God, the only reason I’m...

I touch the tip of my finger to his lips. “There are secrets in here,” I say. “I want them out.”He tries to bite my finger.I steal it back.

Hate looks like everybody else until it smiles

Selfish needs, wants, and desires needed to be obliterated. Greed, overindulgence, and gluttony had to be expunged from human behavior. The solution was in self-control, in minimalism, in sparse living conditions; one simple and a brand-new dictionary filled with words everyone would understand.

Maybe I was crazy to consider it, but I’d always hoped that if I were a good enough girl, if I did everything right, if I said the right things or said nothing at all—I thought my parents would change their minds. I thought they would finally listen when I tried to talk. I thought...

I never thought it would get this bad. I never thought the Reestablishment would take things so far. They’re incinerating culture, the beauty of diversity. The new citizens of our world will be reduced to nothing but numbers, easily interchangeable, easily removable, easily destroyed for disobedience.We have lost our humanity.

I didn’t want the clothes or the perfect shoes or the expensive anything. I didn’t want to be draped in silk. All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart.

I count everything. Even numbers, odd numbers, multiples of 10. I count the ticks of the clock i count the tocks of the clock I count the lines between the lines on a sheet of paper. I count the broken beats of my heart I count my pulse and my blinks and the number of...

I do know that I don’t want to wake him.We were up very late last night.

You have to deal with who you are and you have to figure out how to live with it.

In my very limited experience I’ve already found that people seeking power are not to be trusted.

just stop. Just—I can’t even talk to you right now.

We’re too different now. We want different things. And this?” I say nodding at our hands. “All this managed to prove is that you are extremely good at turning me off

And I do. I do wonder, I think about it all the time. What it would be like to kill myself. Because I never really know, I still can’t tell the difference, I’m never quite certain whether or not I’m actually alive. I sit here every single day. Run, I said to myself. Run until...

I am nothing more than the consequence of catastrophe.

I mean, you know—like, a cute beast. A little beast that tears shit up and breaks the earth and sucks the life out of people.

Why are you touching me? Because I can.

The moon is a loyal companion.It never leaves. It’s always there, watching, steadfast, knowing us in our light and dark moments, changing forever just as we do. Every day it’s a different version of itself. Sometimes weak and wan, sometimes strong and full of light. The moon understands what it means to be human.Uncertain. Alone....