You have to make your own family, your own life.

I will be thin and pure like a glass cup. Empty. Pure as light. Music. I move my hands over my body - my shoulders, my collarbone, my rib cage, my hip bones like part of an animal skull, my small thighs. In the mirror my face is pale and my eyes look bruised. My hair is pale and thin and the light comes through. I could be a lot younger than seventeen. I could be a child still, untouched.

Maybe he was real. Maybe I'd made him up. Either way, he didn't think I needed him anymore. Maybe he was right.

Sometimes she has imagined what it would be like to fly, to live in the river, to run like a horse. She has dreamed of that freedom, that power, and fears the wildness in herself that wants to live as beasts live, moved purely by need and desire. She has felt torn between the heat of her limbs and the thoughts in her mind telling her to be careful and good and always calm. Don't scream or cry, don't run to him and throw yourself at his feet, pleading for him to take you in his arms, don't strip off your clothes and run naked to the water, wild with wanting.

...It felt like they were telling each other secrets. Everything they said felt like that—whispered, tender, full of other meanings, like when you tell someone a dream or talk about your astrological signs as code for all the things you love about each other.

If you were a mermaid, you said, If you were a mermaid, I was the sea.

I believe we recover from loss by facing the loss, grieving, going deep inside ourselves (hopefully with a guide) and re-emerging to live and love again.