- but some people are too alive to fully die, their stories too big to disappear, and he was one of them. i see traces of him all over our magic house. i hear him in the creak and groan of the floorboards as the summer nights stretch them, can visualize him sitting at the foot of my bed, saying, other houses have support beams and foundations. ours has bones and a heartbeat.
- “can you hear it, june-bug?” he would whisper. “the heartbeat of the world?.”
- my life has been so small. and now it’s finally big. look at her. look at my world.
- “if you wait for warmth to enjoy the outdoors,” dad used to say, “the sun might die before you get there.”
- “when you were born, the sun cried,” he whispers. “the lake danced. the dirt in five fingers sung, and all the coywolves stayed up past morning, hollering at the sky. the whole world rejoiced because you were finally in it.”
- i promise you. i promise the stars. i promise the lake and falls, coywolves and robins. i promise earth and heaven: i will love you long after the last human has taken his last breath. when the stars burn out and the oceans freeze over and the whole world is ash and dust and ice, our names will still be carved into the tree of life, side by side, and i’ll still be loving you.
- “what makes us so special, saul?” “we’re in love.” “are we?”
- i’ll always love you. and someday maybe we’ll have a bad breakup or grow apart and—curse or not—all the stars will burn out and the planet will have another ice age, but i’ll go on loving you because i see you, june o’donnell, and i can’t unsee you.
- “when you've been lost as i have," he once said, "you get good at finding your way home.”
- “i’ll never let go of you, june,” he says. “the first time i held you, i saw it all. i didn’t miss any of it. i hope you find this. i hope you know. go live, baby. the world’s waiting.”
- i am very small, and I don’t find myself wishing I were any bigger. all i want, with my one tiny moment, is to love you.
- if you remember anything about me, remember the truest thing: i will love you after all the stars have burned out, after the sun has died and ice has covered the earth, after the last human has taken her last breath. i’m happy, so happy to be a tiny fleck of a thing alongside you. we may just be moments, june, but to love a handful of people very well, that’s a good life.
- i was just a blip, a spark, the blink of god’s eyes. because of you, it was more than enough. it was everything. i was just a moment, and you gave me a million junes. i was just a moment, and you made me forever.
- “i hear you,” he whispers, kissing my collarbone. “i can hear all of you, rushing around in there. a million jacks and juniors and junes, a city of them.”
- maybe for some people, falling in love is an explosion, fireworks against a black sky and tremors rumbling through the earth. one blazing moment. for me, it's been happening for months, as quietly as a seed sprouting. love sneaked through me, spreading roots around my heart, until, in the blink of an eye, the green of it broke the dirt: hidden one moment, there the next.
jan 13 2019 ∞
jan 13 2019 +
jan 13 2019 +