There is so much fragility in kissing, in other people: It is all glass.

I know the rules. I've been living here longer than you have." He cracks a smile then. He nudges me back. "Hardly." "Born and raised. You're a transplant." I nudge him again, a little harder, and he laughs and tries to catch hold of my arm. I squirm away, giggling, and he stretches out to tickle my stomach. "Country bumpkin!" I squeal, as he grabs out and wrestles me back onto the blanket, laughing. "City slicker," he says, rolling over on top of me, and then kisses me. Everything dissolves: heat, explosions of color, floating.

At a certain point your brain stops to rationalize things. At a certain point it gives up, shuts off, shuts down.

But it's not about knowing. It is simply about going forward.

If you want something, if you take it for your own, you'll always be taking it from someone else.

People could push and pull at you, and poke you, and probe as deep as they could go. They could even tear you apart, bit by bit. But at the heart and root and soul of you, something would remain untouched.

I am growing stronger. I am a stone being excavated by the slow passage of water; I am wood charred by a fire.