It could be enough, maybe, or at least a start, but the problem is that at night I tumble into dreams that aren't dreams at all. I tumble into memories and wake up aching for a dying world and a quiet, cold life that offered me nothing but sitting in a still room.

The sun will rise tomorrow. It always does, and all the wishing in the world for the way things were, or for what they could have been, won't change that. It won't change how things are.

Because I-I'm someone who wants to kiss you. Be with you." Eli says as if it is obvious, as if I know what is written on his heart.

..."Are you okay?" he says, still looking at me, and I feel my smile slip, fade, and the silence that falls over us then is so total I can’t hear anything, not the rush-hiss of my heart pounding in my chest, not the sounds all around us; insects, wind, and the distant clatter of others’ lives in houses built close but not too close because when we look out our windows we all like to pretend that everything we see is ours. But Ryan is not mine.

You tell yourself that you aren't something or that you can't be something, and you know what? It will become true. You have to decide who you are and what you can do and then go after what you want. Because believe me, no one is going to give it to you.

It was like we were all so busy trying to be happy or saying we were happy, but underneath there was nothing but bitterness, the kind that could only be bled out in ink, in unspoken word.

I’m broken, I have cut myself wide open. I can see my heart and it is not what I believed it was, it is not good and kind and all the things I have always thought I am.