I feel sorry for beautiful people. Beauty, from the moment you possess it, is already slipping away, ephemeral.

He says ‘Boys become men in the laps of women, you know?’
I think of my mothers faced lined with her bad choices in men.
He says ‘If you were mine you wouldn’t get away with this shit, I’d eat you for hours, I’d gut you like fruit.’
I think of my cousins circumcision, how she feels like a mermaid, not human from the waist down.
He says ‘I’d look after you, you know?’
I laugh, I ask for the last time ‘How old?’
He says ’34.’
He says ‘She was beautiful though and I know what you’re thinking but it’s not like that,
I’m a man, I’m a man, I’m a man.
No one could ever hurt me’

You have to understand,
no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land

Two people who were once very close
can without blame
or grand betrayal
become strangers
perhaps this is the saddest thing in the world

Excuses For Why We Failed At Love:
1. I’m lonely so I do lonely things
2. Loving you was like going to war; I never came back the same.
3. You hate women, just like your father and his father, so it runs in your blood.
4. I was wandering the derelict car park of your heart looking for a ride home.
5. You’re a ghost town I’m too patriotic to leave.
6. I stay because you’re the beginning of the dream I want to remember.
7. I didn’t call him back because he likes his girls voiceless.
8. It’s not that he wants to be a liar; it’s just that he doesn’t know the truth.
9. I couldn’t love you, you were a small war.
10. We covered the smell of loss with jokes.
11. I didn’t want to fail at love like our parents.
12. You made the nomad in me build a house and stay.
13. I’m not a dog.
14. We were trying to prove our blood wrong.
15. I was still lonely so I did even lonelier things.
16. Yes, I’m insecure, but so was my mother and her mother.
17. No, he loves me he just makes me cry a lot.
18. He knows all of my secrets and still wants to kiss me.
19. You were too cruel to love for a long time.
20. It just didn’t work out.
21. My dad walked out one afternoon and never came back.
22. I can’t sleep because I can still taste him in my mouth.
23. I cut him out at the root, he was my favorite tree, rotting, threatening the foundations of my home.
24. The women in my family die waiting.
25. Because I didn’t want to die waiting for you.
26. I had to leave, I felt lonely when he held me.
27. You’re the song I rewind until I know all the words and I feel sick.
28. He sent me a text that said “I love you so bad.”
29. His heart wasn’t as beautiful as his smile
30. We emotionally manipulated one another until we thought it was love.
31. Forgive me, I was lonely so I chose you.
32. I’m a lover without a lover.
33. I’m lovely and lonely.
34. I belong deeply to myself.

I don't know when love became elusive
what I know, is that no one I know has it
my fathers arms around my mothers neck
fruit too ripe to eat, a door half way open
when your name is a just a hand I can never hold

Jeg lengtet så jeg holdt på å sprenges, lengtet etter alt som var for sent

Jeg visste ikke hvordan jeg skulle gjøre meg selv lykkelig eller gi meg selv et så godt liv som mulig, men jeg følte at jeg hadde gått glipp av noe virkelig stort i livet, eller at jeg gikk glipp av det kontinuerlig, at jeg hadde i meg muligheter til mye sterkere følelser enn jeg hadde gått gjennom livet og følt.

Og jeg tenker at jeg kommer til å huske dette, også, i lang tid eller for alltid. De våte øynene, det bunnløs-aktige. At det bare er en bagatell, ikke noe å ta alvorlig, at det kommer til å gå over, at det er tusenvis av ting som hender med en tolvåring, men at for henne er alt sammen alt annet enn en bagatell og alltid største alvor. Jeg husker følelsene i den alderen, jeg husker hvor alvorlige og tunge de er, og de forsvinner ikke fort, jeg har dem i meg ennå.

There is not one true self hidden by many false ones. Rather, there is one true self hidden by many other true ones.

In this other life, she wouldn't have to worry so much. She could say anything, do anything, kiss boys and not worry about her reputation, watch movies with abandon, stop obsessing about tests or homework, shower with the other girls, wear far-out clothes and sit at the hippie table for kicks. In this other more interesting life, Faye would live consequence-free, and it seemed beautiful and lovely and, as soon as she thought about it objectively for ten seconds, ridiculous. Totally beyond her reach.

There is no greater ache than this: guilt and regret in equal measure.

You never even decided your life would be this way - it's simply the way life has become. You've been carved out by the things that have happened to you.

There are things inside you that you prefer to ignore. There is a molten mass of anguish and self-pity way deep inside you and you keep it pressed down there by never looking at it or acknowledging it.

You'd be amazed at the facts people are willing to set aside to believe that life is, indeed, great.

Beyond everything else, she loves this: how swiftly things can strike her - music, people, life - how quickly they can suprise her, all of sudden, like a punch.

The flip side of being a person who never fails at anything is that you never do anything you could fail at. You never do anything risky. There's a certain essential lack of courage among people who seem to be good at everything.

"Because when all you have is the memory of a thing" she said, "all you can think about is how the thing is gone"

He'd settle into the anger because the anger was so much easier than the work required to escape it

He's trying to be in the moment, trying not to let the moment get all discolored by his fantasies of what the moment ought to be.