You asked me who I thought I was before. I said maybe I was a fish because I love water and you said, you thought a mermaid, maybe. If you were a mermaid, you said, if you were a mermaid, I was the sea.

I want to be untouchable and beautiful and completely dead inside.

After his kisses and hugs it feels like without them my body will fall apart into pieces.

That was when I cut my arms with a razor blade as a means of creative expression. I only did it lightly, just grazing the skin, to see the way the blood would bleed out, to make myself look tougher. Not like some of those kids who keep going deeper and deeper, wondering what they look like down to the bone, because it's a world that's so close and yet so far and so dangerous and so much their own. The only world that is their own.

This was not a fearie tale. This was not the movies. This was life. It hurt more. It was excruciating. It was excruciatingly beautiful.

Love can transform us. It can be a healing force or a disaster, a tidal wave, a tornado. It can burn and scar us or heal our scars. It can be the ghost that haunts us, or the best friend who reads our every thought. Love may arrive like an angel of mercy, a fairy with raven wings or a hairy beast that will tear us apart limb from limb, kill and savor us down to the bones.

Pianos, unlike people, sing when you give them your every growl. They know how to dive into the pit of your stomach and harmonize with your roars when you’ve split yourself open. And when they see you, guts shining, brain pulsing, heart right there exposed in a rhythm that beats need need, need need, need need, pianos do not run. And so she plays.