Book: Memories - Lang Leav

• “Have you ever longed for her, on nights that go on and on; for now, her face is all a blur, like a memory kept too long. Have you ever loved a rose, and bled against her thorns; and swear each night to let her go, then love her more by dawn.” (Excerpt: The Rose)
• “I think someone broke his heart once and now he can’t bear to be apart from the ocean." (Excerpt: Stowaway)
• “I know you have seen things you wish you hadn’t. You have done things you wish you could take back. And you wonder why you were thrown into the thick of it all—why you had to suffer the way you did. And as you are sitting there alone and hurting, I wish I could put a pen in your hand and gently remind you how the world has given you poetry and now you must give it back.” (Poetry)
• “One day he will find you. He will touch you and you will feel a lifetime of indifference—of apathy melt away in a single moment. And you will ache for him. You will love him, in the way you walk a tightrope—in the way people learn to fall asleep in a war zone. You will bleed for him until the day he is gone. You will bleed for him every day after that. The time will pass and you will feel robbed—and you will grow bitter. You will ask why, but you won’t get an answer. And that is when the words will come.” (A Writer's Muse)
• “Like a tripwire, you’re afraid of the damage but you know you can’t keep standing still. And the world falls away and you’re exactly where you were on the last night you saw him, when he had his hands in your hair and his mouth on your neck and he never said a word about leaving.” (Excerpt: Memories)
• “You said my sadness was like the sun, beautiful from a distance but it hurt you too much to come closer.” (Excerpt: Now and Then)
• “I was ready to give it all up—everything. I was half out of my mind with love. And I didn’t think twice about what I was throwing into the fire, as long as I could keep it burning for just another minute—if only I was allowed to sit awhile longer beside its pale glow.

That was how I loved you in the end. With my body cold and shuddering. With empty hands over smoldering ash, counting out the minutes.” (In The End)

• “I cried the first time I told him about you. I said I was sorry as he held me so close. He said he now knew why my eyes were like searchlights. How they looked at the sky with such longing. And why I read my stars in the paper each morning. He left me one Sunday with his cup half empty. I padded downstairs and saw the writing on the wall. Outside the rain was already falling. And there were still pieces of you behind every door.” (Excerpt: Pieces of You)
• “She was the sound of glass shattering—the sharp ringing in your ears.” “She was the zigzag in your straight line. The absence in your direction. ” “She. She was the sound of glass shattering—the sharp ringing in your ears. The perpetual motion of a spinning ballerina trapped inside a music box. The sad, tinny tune of La Vie en Rose.

She was the zigzag in your straight line. The absence in your direction. She was every turn you took when racing through a hedge maze, against the setting sun. She was the tide that came in and out, like the breath of the wounded. She was the blood that flowed between heart and head. She was the book that was not written. The sentence that was not scripted. She was the word you wished you could have said.” (Excerpts: She)

• “But maybe I’m too late. Because I don’t know how to talk to you. I don’t know how to ask you if you’re okay. I don’t know how to tell you I am so afraid of losing you. How much light would leave my life if you were no longer part of it.

I just hope you realize how much you mean to me. I just wish I could remind you of how beautiful you are. I’m sorry I haven’t told you in so long. But please don’t think I have given up on you. I will never give up on you. My arms are wide open. There is always a place for you here.” (Excerpt: Reaching Out)

• “I think of you on jet planes. In thoughts that go a million miles an hour. Over toy towns and towers made of tin. Nothing feels real without you.

Do you think of what could have been? In the early morning light when you wake up next to some stranger, wondering why you don’t feel a thing. In every bar room and bedroom where you’re forced into conversation or giving away parts of yourself—do you miss me? Do you think of me in cars? When every turn you take is driving us further apart. Does every road sign pleading you to take care, remind you of how much I want you, how deeply you are loved? “I think of you on roads that stretch into the horizon. On roundabouts and signs that keep telling me I am going in the wrong direction. I hope you think of me as much as I think of you. I hope that every step will bring you closer, that every dead end is a messenger, willing you to turn back around, reminding you it’s time to come home.” (Excerpt: Home)

• “Do you remember that night I turned up on your doorstep? I was wearing my Sunday best. You watched the mascara as it ran down like fault lines, and you knew I had blood on my lips.” (Excerpt: Sunday Best)
• “What is she like? I was told— she is a melancholy soul.” (Excerpt: The Wanderer)
• “I know you’ve lost someone and it hurts. You may have lost them suddenly, unexpectedly. Or perhaps you began losing pieces of them until one day, there was nothing left. You may have known them all your life or you may have barely known them at all. Either way, it is irrelevant—you cannot control the depth of a wound another inflicts upon you.

Which is why I am not here to tell you tomorrow will be a new day. That the sun will go on shining. Or there are plenty of fish in the sea. What I will tell you is this; it’s okay to be hurting as much as you are. What you are feeling is not only completely valid but necessary—because it makes you so much more human. And though I can’t promise it will get better any time soon, I can tell you that it will—eventually. For now, all you can do is take your time. Take all the time you need. 
” (Broken Hearts)

• “Her eyes, a closed book, her heart, a locked door; she writes melancholy like she’s lived it before. She once loved in a way, you could not understand; he left her in pieces and a pen in her hand. The ode to her sorrow in the life she has led— her scratches on paper, the words they have bled.
” (Ode To Sorrow)
• “You were like a dream, I wish I hadn’t slept through. Within it I fell deeper, than your heart would care to let you. I thought you were a keeper, I wish I could have kept you.
” (The Keeper)
• “Her heart is played like well-worn strings; in her eyes, the sadness sings— of one who was destined for better things.
” (Swan Song)
• “The way he writes of all I dream, things kind yet cruel and in-between, where underneath those twisted trees, a pretty girl fallen to her knees.” (Excerpt: Sundays with Michael)
• “Here are the things I want for you.

I want you to be happy. I want someone else to know the warmth of your smile, to feel the way I did when I was in your presence. I want you to know how happy you once made me and though you really did hurt me, in the end, I was better for it. I don’t know if what we had was love, but if it wasn’t, I hope never to fall in love. Because of you, I know I am too fragile to bear it. I want you to remember my lips beneath your fingers and how you told me things you never told another soul. I want you to know that I have kept sacred, everything you had entrusted in me and I always will. Finally, I want you to know how sorry I am for pushing you away when I had only meant to bring you closer. And if I ever felt like home to you, it was because you were safe with me. I want you to know that most of all.
” (For You)

• “I wonder if there will be a morning when you’ll wake up missing me. That some incident in your life would have finally taught you the value of my worth. And you will feel a surge of longing, when you remember how I was good to you.

When this day comes I hope you will look for me. I hope you will look with the kind of conviction I’d always hoped for, but never had from you. Because I want to be found. And I hope it will be you—who finds me.
” (Amends)

• “Do you know what it is like, to lie in bed awake; with thoughts to haunt you every night, of all your past mistakes. Knowing sleep will set it right— if you were not to wake. 
” (A Way Out)
• “I sometimes think about the fragility of glass—of broken shards tearing against soft skin. When in truth, it is the transparency that kills you. The pain of seeing through to something you can never quite touch.” (Excerpt: Dead Butterflies)
• “I barely know you, she says, voice heavy with sleep. I don’t know your favorite color or how you like your coffee. What keeps you up at night or the lullabies that sing you to sleep. I don’t know a thing about the first girl you loved, why you stopped loving her or why you still do. I don’t know how many millions of cells you are made of and if they have any idea they are part of something so beautiful and unimaginably perfect. I may not have a clue about any of these things, but this—she places her hand on his chest—this I know.
” (Lullabies)
• “My greatest lesson learnt, you were mine until you weren’t. It was you who taught me so, the grace in letting go. The time we had was all— there was not a moment more.
” (All There Was)
• “I remember our sorrows in shades, like the gray of the shadows, which loomed that day, and the white in his lie when he promised to stay.
” (Excerpt: That Day)
• “Do you remember the song that was playing the night we met? No, but I remember every song I have heard since you left.
” (Excerpt: Sad Songs)
• “It happens like this. One day you meet someone and for some inexplicable reason, you feel more connected to this stranger than anyone else—closer to them than your closest family. Perhaps because this person carries an angel within them—one sent to you for some higher purpose, to teach you an important lesson or to keep you safe during a perilous time. What you must do is trust in them—even if they come hand in hand with pain or suffering—the reason for their presence will become clear in due time. Though here is a word of warning—you may grow to love this person but remember they are not yours to keep. Their purpose isn’t to save you but to show you how to save yourself. And once this is fulfilled, the halo lifts and the angel leaves their body as the person exits your life. They will be a stranger to you once more. It’s so dark right now, I can’t see any light around me.
 That’s because the light is coming from you. You can’t see it but everyone else can.
” (Angels)
• “Because losing someone isn’t an occasion or an event. It doesn’t just happen once. It happens over and over again. I lose you every time I pick up your favorite coffee mug; whenever that one song plays on the radio, or when I discover your old t-shirt at the bottom of my laundry pile. I lose you every time I think of kissing you, holding you, or wanting you. I go to bed at night and lose you, when I wish I could tell you about my day. And in the morning, when I wake and reach for the empty space across the sheets, I begin to lose you all over again.
” (Excerpt: Losing You)
• “Your love I once surrendered, has never left my mind. My heart is just as tender, as the day I called you mine. I did not take you with me, but you were never left behind.
” (Always With Me)
• “I turn away and close my heart— to the promise of love that is luring. For the past has taught to not be caught, in what is not worth pursuing— To never do the things I’ve done that once had led to my undoing." (Afraid To Love)
• “I think this is where I belong—among all your other lost things. A crumpled note at the bottom of a drawer or an old photograph pressed between the pages of a book. I hope someday you will find me and remember what I once meant to you.
” (Excerpt: Lost Things)