Please may this not be a game. Please may this not be a game. Because if it’s a game, I know I’m going to lose.

We could call you an ambisexual. A duosexual. A—” “Do I really have to find a word for it?” Kyle interrupts. “Can’t it just be what it is?” “Of course,” I say, even though in the bigger world I’m not so sure. The world loves stupid labels. I wish we got to choose our own. We pause for a moment. I wonder if that’s all—if he just needed to say the truth and have it heard. But then Kyle looks at me with unsure eyes and says, “You see, I don’t know who I’m supposed to be.” “Nobody does,” I assure him.

why won't they leave me alone? don't they realize I have a tinder heart and a paper body and that any spark will turn me straight to ash?

I measure the moment in the heartbeats I skip

My pride shut me up, my hurt shut me down, and together they ganged up on my hope and let her get away.

And I find myself saying, “It wasn’t really about her.” And finding it’s true. What do you mean?” Norah asks. It was about the feeling, you know? She caused it in me, but it wasn’t about her. It was about my reaction, what I wanted to feel and then convinced myself that I felt, because I wanted it that bad. That illusion. It was love because I created it as love.

If goodness can't come from bad things, it makes bad things unbearable.