His lips soften into a smile that cracks apart my spine. He repeats my name like the word amuses him. Entertains him. Delights him. In seventeen years no one has said my name like that

I have a heart, says science, but I am a monster, says society.

The words get easier the moment you stop fearing them.

I want to smash this concrete world into oblivion. I want to be bigger, better, stronger. I want to be the bird that flies away.

I want your mind. Your strength. I want to be worth your time.

His hands are holding my cheeks, and he pulls back just to look me in the eye and his chest is heaving and he says, "I think," he says, "my heart is going to explode," and I wish, more than ever, that I knew how to capture moments like these and revisit them forever. Because this. This is everything.

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