This Is Where the World Ends

I am thinking about the times I wanted to say thank you but couldn’t find the words and the times I wanted to say I’m sorry but couldn’t find the guts

So many people have asked me if I’m okay without really wanting an answer, or they ask if they can do anything without meaning it.

There’s a lot of people who never get saved. There are a lot of people who get toes or heels cut off, who are stuffed in barrels studded with nails and rolled down hills, who are cursed or burned alive or forgotten.

Miracles belong to the desperate, which is why every religion, every philosophy, and most importantly, every fairy tale always has a moment of salvation, a eureka, an enlightenment.

I could understand a world where she was distant but not lost. I couldn’t understand a world without her.

because the earth is really just a bunch of body holes waiting to be filled, and neither of us can ever find a place to fit except with each other.

We knew each other to our fingertips. No, that’s not right. We only knew each other in our fingertips, and that was nothing at all, and for a while that was okay. We could have been a love story, a fairy tale, an indie film about high school and selective insanity featuring a boy of angel parts and a girl made of dreaming. We could have been all of the best things: bracelets sliding down arms while shots slid down throats, laughter and crashing music in dark and flashing rooms, kisses that started hesitant but didn’t stay that way.

I always knew I’d make it to the top one day. I had painted the moment of triumph in watercolor, in oil, in acrylic; I had sculpted it in clay and stone and plaster, welded it in copper and iron; I had dreamed it in color and sepia, oversaturated and in black-and-white.

People say because too much. You don’t always need a reason. I want cliché and simple.

Stars and stars, night after night, secrets spilled in a world too big for sleep.