My heart is drumming in my chest so hard it aches, but it's the good kind of ache, like the feeling you get on the first real day of autumn, when the air is crisp and the leaves are all flaring at the edges and the wind smells just vaguely of smoke - like the end and the beginning of something all at once.

...into hate, into refusal, against hope and without fear

I want to be healed and whole and perfect again, like a misshapen slab of iron that comes out of the fire glowing, glittering, razor-sharp.

Are you ever afraid to go to sleep? Afraid of what comes next?” He smiles a sad little smile and I swear it’s like he knows. “Sometimes I’m afraid of what I’m leaving behind,” he says.

The salt blowing off the sea makes the air feel textured and heavy.

How is it possible, I think, to change so much and not be able to change anything at all?

I just want to be normal, like everybody else." "Are you sure that being like everybody else will make you happy?