I love you. Remember. They cannot take it

There's that confidence again, that semi-infuriating easiness of his, the tilt of his head and the smile. but today it's not infuriating. Today I like it, feel like it's somehow rubbing off on me, like if I was around him enough I would never feel awkward or frightened or insecure.

What I meant was, you looked happier in the pictures.

I have had to give up so much, so many selves and lives already. I have grown up and out of the rubble of my old lives, of things and people I have cared for.

No one had ever told her this basic fact: not everyone got to be loved.

This is the strange way of the world, that people who simply want to love are instead forced to become warriors.

Things That Don't Matter When You've Lived the Same Day Six Times and Died on at Least Two of Them: Lunch meats and their relative coolness.