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- “and it seemed to me that dante's face was a map of the world. a world without any darkness. wow, a world without darkness. how beautiful was that?”
- “i renamed myself ari. if i switched the letter, my name was air. i thought it might be a great thing to be the air. i could be something and nothing at the same time. i could be necessary and also invisible. everyone would need me and no one would be able to see me.”
- “something happened inside me as i looked out into the vast universe. through that telescope, the world was closer and larger than i'd ever imagined. and it was all so beautiful and overwhelming and – i don't know – it made me aware that there was something inside of me that mattered.”
- “i had a feeling there was something wrong with me. i guess i was a mystery even to myself.”
- “i wanted to tell them that i'd never had a friend, not ever, not a real one. until dante. i wanted to tell them that i never knew that people like dante existed in the world, people who looked at the stars, and knew the mysteries of water, and knew enough to know that birds belonged to the heavens and weren't meant to be shot down from their graceful flights by mean and stupid boys. i wanted to tell them that he had changed my life and that i would never be the same, not ever. and that somehow it felt like it was dante who had saved my life and not the other way around. i wanted to tell them that he was the first human being aside from my mother who had ever made me want to talk about the things that scared me. i wanted to tell them so many things and yet i didn't have the words. so i just stupidly repeated myself. "dante's my friend.”
- “i always felt that i didn’t belong anywhere. i didn’t even belong in my own body—especially in my own body. i was changing into someone i didn’t know. the change hurt but i didn’t know why it hurt. and nothing about my own emotions made any sense.”
- “swimming and you, ari. those are the things i love the most.”
- “why do we smile? why do we laugh? why do we feel alone? why are we sad and confused? why do we read poetry? why do we cry when we see a painting? why is there a riot in the heart when we love? why do we feel shame? what is that thing in the pit of your stomach called desire?”
- “i felt small and insignificant and inadequate. i hated feeling that way. i was going to stop feeling that way. i was going to stop.”
- “this was what was wrong with me. all this time i had been trying to figure out the secrets of the universe, the secrets of my own body, of my own heart. all of the answers had always been so close and yet i had always fought them without even knowing it. from the minute i’d met dante, i had fallen in love with him. i just didn’t let myself know it, think it, feel it.”
- “i took dante’s hand and held it. how could i have ever been ashamed of loving dante quintana?”
- “as far as i was concerned, the sun could have melted the blue right off the sky. then the sky could be as miserable as i was.”
- “the summer sun was not meant for boys like me. boys like me belonged to the rain.”
- “i wondered what that was like, to hold someone’s hand. i bet you could sometimes find all of the mysteries of the universe in someone’s hand.”
- “i hated being volunteered. the problem with my life was that it was someone else's idea.”
- “feeling sorry for myself was an art. i think a part of me liked doing that.”
- “until dante, being with other people was the hardest thing in the world for me. but dante made talking and living and feeling seem like all those things were perfectly natural. not in my world, they weren’t.”
- “i was mostly invisible. i think i liked it that way. and then dante came along.”
- “scars. a sign that you had been hurt. a sign that you had healed. had i been hurt? had i healed? maybe we just lived between hurting and healing.”
- “sometimes, you do things and you do them not because you're thinking but because you're feeling. because you're feeling too much. and you can't always control the things you do when you're feeling too much.”
- “i have always felt terrible inside. the reasons for this keep changing.”
- “it was good to laugh. i wanted to laugh and laugh and laugh until i laughed myself into becoming someone else.”
- “the whole world seemed to be quiet and calm and i wanted to be the world and feel like that.”
- “another secret of the universe: sometimes pain was like a storm that came out of nowhere. the clearest summer could end in a downpour. could end in lightning and thunder.”
- “i had learned to hide what i felt. no, that's not true. there was no learning involved. i had been born knowing how to hide what i felt.”
- “i have this idea that the reason we have dreams is that we're thinking about things that we don't know we're thinking about-and those things, well, they sneak out of us in our dreams. maybe we're like tires with too much air in them. the air has to leak out. that's what dreams are.”
- “what mattered is that dante’s voice felt real. and i felt real.”
- “i noticed his smile was a little sad. maybe everyone was a little sad. maybe so.”
- “i wanted to talk, to say something, to ask questions. but i couldn’t. all the words were stuck in my throat. so i just nodded.”
- “i wanted to tell him not to cry anymore, tell him that what those boys did to that bird didn’t matter. but i knew it did matter. it mattered to dante. and, anyway, it didn’t do any good to tell him not to cry because he needed to cry. that’s the way he was.”
- “i was harder than dante. i think i’d tried to hide that hardness from him because i’d wanted him to like me. but now he knew. that i was hard. and maybe that was okay. maybe he could like the fact that i was hard just as i liked the fact that he wasn’t hard.”
- “and why was it that some guys had tears in them and some had no tears at all? different boys lived by different rules.”
- “i felt alone, but not in a bad way. i really liked being alone. maybe i liked it too much.”
- “i thought of dante and wondered about him. and it seemed to me that dante’s face was a map of the world. a world without any darkness. wow, a world without darkness. how beautiful was that?”
- “words were different when they lived inside of you.”
- “we all fight our own private wars.”
- “it felt like there was a whole world living inside her. i didn't know anything about that world.”
- “everyone expected something from me. something i just couldn't give.”
- “one summer night i fell asleep hoping the world would be different when i woke. in the morning, when i opened my eyes, the world was the same.”
- “some poems were easier than others. some were inscrutable. i was thinking that maybe i did know the meaning of that word. i got to thinking that poems were like people. some people you got right off the bat. some people you just didn't get --and never would get.”
- “and i thought that maybe there were ghosts inside of me that i hadn’t even met yet. they were there. lying in wait.”
- “the world was so silent. there was a barrier between me and the world, and i thought for a moment that the world had never wanted me and now it was taking the opportunity to get rid of me.”
- “it was strange to talk to him about something real. but it scared me too. i wanted to keep talking, but i didn’t know exactly how to say what i was holding inside me. i looked down at the floor. then i looked up at him and shrugged like no big deal.”
- “i wanted to tell her that happy was hard for me. but i think she already knew that.”
- “it’s sad. it’s sad and it’s lonely.” “like you,” he said. i hated that he saw who i was. “i’m not sad all the time,” i said. “i know,” he said.”
- “but the worst part was that those words were living inside me. and they were leaking out of me. words were not things you could control. not always.”
- “i didn’t know what was happening to me. everything was chaos and i was scared.”
- “the sky was almost black and then it started hailing. it was so beautiful and scary, i wondered about the science of storms and how sometimes it seemed that a storm wanted to break the world and how the world refused to break.”
- “he had given me a piece of himself that he had never given to another human being.”
- “i wasn’t interested in being known. i wanted to buy a t-shirt that read: i am unknowable.”
- “there is a famous painting, nighthawks, by edward hopper. i am in love with that painting. sometimes, i think everyone is like the people in that painting, everyone lost in their own private universes of pain or sorrow or guilt, everyone remote and unknowable. the painting reminds me of you. it breaks my heart.”
- “the ari i used to be didn’t exist anymore. and the ari i was becoming? he didn’t exist yet.”
- “and then we started laughing and couldn’t stop. and i missed him so much.”
- “if summer was a book then i was going to write something beautiful in it. in my own handwriting. but i had no idea what to write.”
- “the way she said that. the way she looked at me. sometimes there was so much love in her voice that i just couldn’t stand it.”
- “he looked so happy and i wondered about that, his capacity for happiness. where did that come from? did i have that kind of happiness inside me? was i just afraid of it?”
- “but i had learned how to hide what i felt. no, that’s not true. there was no learning involved. i had been born knowing how to hide what i felt.”
- “but love was always something heavy for me. something i had to carry.”
- “we were laughing again. and that was good. it wouldn’t be summer without dante’s laughter.”
- “i fell into dante’s arms and cried. he held me and didn’t say a word.”
- “another secret of the universe: sometimes pain was like a storm that came out of nowhere. the clearest summer morning could end in a downpour. could end in lightning and thunder.
- “it’s just that sometimes i have things running around inside me, these feelings. i don’t always know what to do with them.”
- “i knew he was trying to organize himself. like a messy room that needed to be cleaned up. i left him alone for a while. but then, i decided i wanted to be with him. i decided that maybe we left each other alone too much. leaving each other alone was killing us.”
- “but there weren’t any words and the silent tears just kept running down my face like there was a river inside me.”
- “storms always made me feel so small. even though summers were mostly made of sun and heat, summers for me were about the storms that came and went. and left me feeling alone. did all boys feel alone?”
- “but there was something swimming around inside me that always made me feel bad. i wondered if all boys had that darkness inside them.”
- “in some ways i had never felt closer to him. in other ways i had never felt further away.”
- “there was something about the sound of a man in pain that resembled the sound of a wounded animal. my heart was breaking.”
- “i couldn’t stand to see the rawness of his pain, how new it was after so many years, how that pain was alive and thriving just beneath the surface.”
- “i think you couldn’t stand the thought of losing him. you just couldn’t.”
- “i think you love him more than you can bear.”
jan 1 2019 ∞
may 4 2020 +
may 4 2020 +