When we are young, the words are scattered all around us. As they are assembled by experience, so also are we, sentence by sentence, until the story takes shape.

I think she is confused by the way I want her, which is like nobody else. I know this deep down. I want her in a new way, a way she's never been told about.

Her clothes were filled with safety pins and hidden tears.

The length of sky is just about the size of my ignorance. Pure and wide.

You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart.

In order to purify yourself, you have to understand yourself, Father Trais went on. Everything out in the world is also in you. Good, bad, evil, perfection, death, everything. So we study our souls.

I tried out the unfamiliar syllables. They fit. They cracked in my ears like a fist through ice.