• "But the truth is
• You couldn't tell if something was wrong or normal with you
• And you spent so much time considering what it must be like to be someone else
• Someone else, someone else,
• That you forgot to consider what it must be like to be someone at all."

⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀

• "Tomorrow when the farm boys find this freak of nature, they will wrap his body in newspaper and carry him to the museum.
• But tonight he is alive and in the north field with his mother. It is a perfect summer evening: the moon rising over the orchard, the wind in the grass. And as he stares into the sky, there are twice as many stars as usual."

⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀

• "Let me lose myself in the woods one day, and do not come looking.
• Know that I will not be returning, but do not despair.
• It's better this way.
• I was always going to disappear, anyway.
• Didn't you know that?
• I've never been content, always yearned for something more.
• And someday I will run away and I will find it in the forest.
• Do not think of me often, but, if you do, think of me in the weeds
• And in the trees and in the river and in the soil, six feet under, feeding the worms.
• Know, after all these years, that I am free."

⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀

• "Is it cruel to buy a bouquet?
• To cut a flower from its root and kill it?
• To bundle it up and sell it, to try and keep it alive when it's already dying?
• Is it cruel to press flowers?
• To pluck them and let them dry out,
• To trap them between the pages of books, a corpse on display?
• I think we mistreat the things we find beautiful.
• I think we kill them because we love them.
• It is a crime of passion to pick a flower.
• Though we try to deny it, it is part of our nature to kill."

⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀

• " FAILED NECROMANCY AND OTHER EXPRESSIONS OF LOVE.
• How long can you hold on to a thing that is dying? And how tight?
• How much time do you spend by its side, willing it back to life?
• (How long does it take for you to remember that you can't?)
• How long do you hold on to a thing unraveling? And how tight?
• How much time do you waste, fumbling,
• Trying to hold each string together with your fingers?
• (When do you give up? When there's nothing left to be held?)
• And how long will it take for us to realize, at long last,
• That you and I are a tattered, broken thing? How much time will it take to realize that we were doomed from the start,
• When I loved you, and you loved how much I loved you?
• How long will we hold on to the ghost of what we were,
• Willing the corpse to reanimate, the thread to mend?
• How much time will it take for you to realize what I've always known,
• That we, like Icarus, have always been destined to
• Burn too bright and then fall apart?
• There is nothing to be done to fix rotting flesh and broken strings,
• And, I fear, my Dear, that there is nothing to be done to fix us.
• But go on, go on, and pray, even though neither of us believe in much,
• And I will watch you from afar and I will feel bad, but I will not join you.
• I am well aware of when it is time to give up.
• I may be a fool, but I know when something has been ruined beyond repair.
• I am no necromancer, no tailor, and my God, neither are you.
• I am done pretending to be ting I am not--
• I am done pretending I am still in love with you.

⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀

• "They would have found dandelion seeds had they done the autopsy. They would have found a field burning lavender had they cut her open."

⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀

• "There is a love in me the likes of which you've never seen. There is a rage in me the likes in which you should never escape."

⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀

• "The world is something that was put into your hands and that you must deal with - so you will.
• You have a rigid back and steady hands, either metaphorically or physically.
• Is it nature or nurture? You don't know.
• You are tired of being steady.
• You dream of feeling alive.
• Not that you aren't, but, sometimes, it's hard to remember that there is a heart between your ribs.
• Your love is where you breath. Come on, breath. In. Out. It starts now."