My stomach gets that hollowed-out feeling. It's amazing how words can do that, just shred your insides apart.

Perhaps this was how the sparrows did it too; perhaps they were looking so hard at the peaks and tips of the new rooftops coated with dew, and the vast new horizon, that they only forgot that they did not know how to fly until they were already in midair.

But maybe you carried your demons with you everywhere, the way you carried your shadow.

I’ve been trying so hard not to think his name, not to even breathe the idea of him

I’m sorry for everything.” Then he turns and pushes back into the woods, and he’s gone.

The whole point of growing up is learning to stay on the laughing side.

amazingly, i'd actually forgotten that i'm supposed to be plain. i'm so used to alex telling me i'm beautiful. i'm so used to feeling beautiful around him. a hollow opens up in my chest. this is what life will be like without him: everything will become ordinary again. i'll become ordinary again.