Magnolia Parks: Into the Dark

He lets out my favourite laugh that feels like a cup of tea on a rainy day,

BJ, I love in an unquestionable way. I love BJ like he’s the sun. Blinding, bright, unbridled, unavoidable. He’s the thing that sustains the galaxy of me. He drives the currents of me, he dictates the climates and the seasons. I feel his warmth on my face, and when he’s gone, it’s colder. He is the centre of everything, and the gravity of me is loyal to him above all.

But you see, the thing about stars is that in another galaxy, that star is also a sun. "If it wasn't him, it would be you.

ADHD is crazy, actually. My brain, how fast it moves at any given moment—that the hyperactivity, it’s not me bouncing off walls, it’s a thousand thoughts each minute bouncing off the walls in my head. And there are parts of it that are wonderful, I notice things other people don’t, I’m detail-oriented, I pick up patterns well, I think I’m quite clever, truthfully. I like how I think. I wasn’t sad when they diagnosed me with it, it made a lot of things about me make sense, and about us and how I am and how I can be and why—it answered a lot. It can be bad though. It can be a waterboarding of thoughts. Just—cloth over my brain’s face, and all the thoughts in the world being poured over my mouth and nose and you can’t breathe because if you do you’ll choke on them—

and I think it’s amazing how time and space mean naught in matters of the heart.

A love like ours-? Are you joking?" I give her the magic smile. "We're what the poems are about" -give her a little poke in the ribs- "they'll write TV shows about how much I love you.

Don’t know if there even is such a thing as “worse” when it comes to grief. I’ve kind of come to think of grief the same way you might think about drowning. Drowning is drowning, some people might be drowning for longer than others, some drowning might put you on a whole new path once you’re through it, sometimes it might change how your brain works if you’re cut off from oxygen for long enough, could even cost you your life—the severity of the drowning incident might be scalable but the drowning itself, the grief itself, it’s all water you can’t breathe in.

Because getting to love you has been the most wonderfully human thing I’ve ever had the privilege of doing in my life

If you’re lucky, you might get a great one, and I know I’m the luckiest, because I got two.

I am the fox and you are the flower, and you have tamed me.

You are the thing that the poets wrote about, you are what the choir of angels is singing about, you are the thing that clouds part above and the sun beams down upon. You’re every butterfly, in every stomach. You’re my every tender thought. “You’re a warm towel when you get out of the shower on a cold night. You’re the tea you hold to your chest when you need a minute to yourself. You’re the feeling you get when you’re inside and safe and dry and it’s dark grey outside and it’s teeming down.

and maybe still my best chance for surviving is letting go of everything that is or has been hurting me.

He was something for you when I couldn’t be, and I should have been, so I can’t even like—be shitty about it, because I’m sort of glad he was there.

You are the thing I have to show for in my life, and that won’t ever not be enough to me.

Please don’t quote Shrek What’s ‘Shrek’? I hate you ??

I feel that it’s important you know that even if I didn’t love you in the sort of stupid, embarrassing way that I do; if I did, hypothetically, have a choice—I would choose you anyway.

So you aren’t still in love with her?” I ask, eyebrows up, curious. “You’re over it? Over her? Sayonara, Daisy—” “Well—” His brows bend in the middle. BJ gives me a gentle but firm smile. “Magnolia.” “Oh—” I look at my fiancé. “Too much?” He gives me a tight smile. “You could try not talking for twenty seconds. See what happens.” I don’t do that. Instead I give Tiller an apologetic smile. “See, I was recently diagnosed with ADHD—” “Oh.” Tiller nods, not knowing what to say. “It impairs my prefrontal cortex—something about a neurotransmitter in the brain and then also lower levels of dopamine—which is so rude—don’t you think that’s so rude? Dopamine’s pretty nice—my doctor said it’s probably why I love shopping so much. And sex—

Everyone moves around me these days like I’m made of glass. Like one wrong look and I’ll shatter. Little do they know that it’s too late…All of me already is all shattered. A mosaic of cracks and agony.

Six flights up, I take the stairs two at a time, practically fucking hurl myself at the door as I bang on it. And then it opens and Julian motherfucking Haites fills the frame.

Parksy, you’re not just my first thought, you’re willfully my second one and my third one and every other thereafter, because when I am dead”–grimace over at her for saying the D-word–“Sorry. But when I am, that’s what they’ll say about me. That I loved you. That I still love you. That even if I die, when I die, and I’m old and I’m ready and god willing you’ve died first because otherwise–up front,” I turn to our friends and family. “–sorry to everyone.” I turn back to her. “If I die, when I die, it will echo through space and through time, and it’ll brush up against the edge of this universe and press into the next one that I loved you more than anything.

A love like ours—you drown in it, fill up your lungs with it, choke on it and cough it up as you lay there dying. There’s a violence to loving someone sometimes.

how many people you’re surrounded by has absolutely no correlation at all to how alone you really are.

In this world,” I give him a delicate look, “with BJ?” I shake my head. “I’m sorry.” “That’s—” He trails, letting out this hollow laugh that I kind of hate. It doesn’t suit him. His regular laugh is so wonderful. “—fine.” He nods. “That’s good to know, actually—” “I’m sorry,” I tell him. He shakes his head again. “No, don’t be.” But you see, the thing about stars is that in another galaxy, that star is also a sun. “If it wasn’t him, it would be you,” I tell him, for better and for worse. He blows some more air out of his mouth and catches my eye. “In another life, yeah?” I nod and offer him a weak smile. “I’ll meet you there.

Not a day has gone by since I met you where I’ve not loved you.” I drink in those words like they’re water, let them douse the burning fear that lives inside of me that he’ll hurt me again.

I imagine being wanted by Beej feels like the high people want from narcotics. Best feeling in the world. Sometimes I can’t see straight in the pursuit of it. Look at my track record, it’s right there. I’ll do anything to make him want me. He is the master and I’m just a dog doing tricks to please him.

In Greek mythology, when they were first created, the humans had four arms and four legs and a head with two faces. And then when the humans tried to climb Mount Olympus Zeus considered them a proper threat, so he split them in half and they were condemned to spend forever looking for their other half to make them whole again. Lucky for me, I found her when I was six. Been a bit of a fucking journey but here we are—pretty Greek, this journey of ours, all things considered. An odyssey of our own.

They were crying because death is scary and uncomfortable and highlights certain things within ourselves that without the threat of mortality pressing in on our consciousness, we’d otherwise ignore, but those such things demand attention at a funeral. Mortality doesn’t just press against you, it body slams you to the floor.

You know the feeling? When you like someone and they like you back and then something shifts for them but not for you and you're left standing there wondering what happened and what changed?

She reached over and rubbed my boyfriend’s arm affectionately and it made me and Harley both roll our eyes, though admittedly it was difficult to blame her because while every other body on the planet is made up of 60 percent water, Baxter James Ballentine is 60 percent sunshine, and if you could squeeze the arm of Sunshine, of course you would.