I spent my life folded between the pages of books. In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters.

I tuck caution into my pocket and hope I can reach for it if I need to.

And we are quotation marks, inverted and upside down, clinging to one another at the end of this life sentence. Trapped by lives we did not choose.

Torture is not torture when there’s any hope of relief.

I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.

And some days I wonder why I insist on keeping myself alive.

Hope. It's like a drop of honey, a field of tulips blooming in the springtime. It's a fresh rain, a whispered promise, a cloudless sky, the perfect punctuation mark at the end of a sentence. And it's the only thing in the world keeping me afloat.