If He Had Been with Me

This book is a treasure; I did not suspect it would be so good when I picked it up, but now I can feel the printed words seeping through my skin and into my veins, rushing to my heart and marking it forever. I want to savor this wonder, this happening of loving a book and reading it for the first time, because the first time is always the best, and I will never read this book for the first time ever again.

I've loved him my whole life, and somewhere along the way, that love didn't change but grew. It grew to fill the parts of me that I did not have when I was a child. It grew with every new longing of my body and desire until there was not a piece of me that did not love him. And when I look at him, there is no other feeling in me.

Just because something seems impossible doesn´t mean that you shouldn´t try.

You think you deserve to be sad," he says. There is a moment of silence as we look at each other. "You think it is okay for you to be sad every day. But it's not okay. And you do not deserve it.

I tell myself relationships are hard work. No one is perfect. There's no such thing as happily ever after.

I love him in a way I cannot define, as if my love were an organ within my body that I could not live without yet could not pick out of an anatomy book.

And it's impossible to say and even harder to feel.

They don’t see that her tension and perfection are the only things holding her together.

I want to savor this wonder, this happening of loving a book and reading it for the first time, because the first time is always the best, and I will never read this book for the first time ever again.

I can see some of the roses still blooming in my mother´s garden. Brown on the edges and bright in other colors, their petals drooping downward, dying just as their lives have begun. They stayed past their time, and I´ve realized that I have too.

Finny never tells anyone how he is feeling; you just have to know him well enough to understand when he is sad or scared. Today his expression does not tell me how he feels about me being over here. Either he couldn't care less, or he could be annoyed.

Is all pink entirely banned?' 'Not if it's like a sassy pink,' I say. 'But if it's a sweet, girl pink, yes. Maybe some shade of sarcastic pink if it isn't too abrasive.

Stay I whisper to him. Stay in the car. Stay in this moment. But of course he never does.

There just isn't a way for two people on a bed to take off their jeans without being awkward and embarrassing. But it can still be perfect and wonderful too.

The wind shakes the leaves and I have a sudden urge to go outside. The gray world out there looks inviting, velvety and cool.

Perhaps he would ask me what books mean to me. I would tell him that it means living another life;

I lay on my bed in late afternoon, watching a patch of light move across the floor, my throat tight, my body still. This is the saddest part of any day, when too much time has passed to create happiness while it is still light out. It’s too late. The daylight has been squandered on my immobility. The patch of light falls still; it begins to fade. It will be better when it is gone. This is only one day, I remind myself, and it is very nearly over.

I want to pull Finny out of my mind like a splinter so that I can adore Jamie the way he deserves to be adored. And even more than that, because I am a selfish, bad creature, I want to feel that adoration. I want to be free of this guilt.

I cannot imagine not wanting to live. I cannot imagine not believing that it will be better someday. I cannot imagine that there is nothing left to see, that there is nothing to tie me to Earth. As long as I want to live, then I must be fine.

And the need to write it down overwhelms me and I step out of the shower, dripping and shivering.

I like the idea of making out in his car; like a scene from a movie, the windows fog up in the cold and the radio plays our song.

I wake many times. We shift and change positions together; he nuzzles me, I move up against him. He holds my hands, my neck, my face. I dream, I wake, I see him, I sleep

This is the saddest part of any day, when too much time has passed to create happiness while it is still light out.

My mother named me Autumn. People say to me “Oh how pretty,” and then the name seems to glide away from them, not grasping all the things that the word should mean to them, shades of red, change, and death