There's a hazy smile on her lips that won't go away, and her hair is a mess. It's like a brushfire filled with casualties.

Rhine. The river that, somewhere out there, has broken free.

and I've always known it, the way I love a song I hear for the first time, even before I know all the words, the way I love my favorite color, and the way that the train would speed past my bedroom when it was very quiet and I'd feel it in my stomach rushing through me. I love you in a way that I've never felt needed to be said.

You can try to please everyone and risk accomplishing nothing, or go for your dreams and risk pissing a few people off.

There is warmth shooting through my broken body where there should be pain, and I put my arms around the back of his neck and I hold on to him. I hold on because you never know in this place when something good will be taken away.

And everywhere girls, tumbling from trees like orange blossoms and hitting the earth with sickening thuds. They crack open.

There are so many of us, so many girls. The world wants us for our wombs or our bodies, or it doesn't want us at all.