Does loving someone mean you want them to be safe? Or that you want them to be able to choose?

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

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 place where you can linger without as much fear. For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey there between footsteps makes up our lives.

The beauty of dystopia is that it lets us vicariously experience future worlds - but we still have the power to change our own.

And it is strange that absence can feel like presence.

I realize now how much courage it takes to choose the life you want, whatever that might be.

Once you want something, everything changes.