Summer Bird Blue

Some people are meant to be forever, like Lea and me. And other people come into your life for a reason— you help each other figure shit out and come to terms with complicated feelings that you can't process on your own.

Grief is a monster - not everyone gets out alive, and those who do might only survive in pieces. But it's a monster that can be conquered, with time.

And maybe that’s like life. You live for a moment—one single moment. And then you don’t matter. Because there are years of the past and years of the future, and we’re all simply one tiny blip in time—a surge of water waiting to leave our mark on the sand, only to have it washed away by the waves that come after us. And Lea, with her brief, tiny wave. She didn’t get to make a mark. If she’d had more time, she would have been a hurricane.

Your sexuality -- and how you identify -- is nobody else's business. You can change your mind, or not change your mind. Those labels exist for you, and not so that everyone else can try to force you into a box. Especially if that box is their close-minded idea of fucking normal.

You can't rush creativity. It's like the rain. You wait and wait and wait, and when it finally comes, it soaks the earth and revives all the plants.

I don't know how to hang on to someone who doesn't exist in the same world as me.

piece of paper falls out and floats to the ground. I pick it up carefully, studying the handwriting I don’t recognize but know is Mr. Watanabe’s. In neat, swooping letters written with black pen are the words: If you get lost in the darkness, remember to follow the music. Thanks for reminding me to do the same. Even though I’m crying, I’m smiling, too.

People fall down. You can either laugh or cry. Laughing makes it easier fo' get back up, though.

Fuck romance—Lea was the love of my life. It was beautiful and horrible and messy and angry, but it was also the purest, most innocent kind of love I’ll ever feel.

I wish I wen' spend less time being haunted and mo' time facing my pain, so dat way--me an' her--we could have been living wit' his memories instead of hiding from dem.

Because music is a carnival at night, lit up by a thousand stars and bursting with luminescent colors and magical illusions. Music is magic and lightning and fireworks.

I hear the strums of a guitar, like the ocean swirling against the sand. It sounds the way mango tastes--soft and sweet, and just enough warmth to make you feel calm.

My sister died and my parents abandoned me. I kind of stopped caring about tomorrow.

I don’t know much about love, but I do know what it’s like to feel like you fit perfectly with someone else. I felt with Lea and Mom. And I don’t know if love can ever be more real than that.

Because that’s how it is when you have a sister you love—you never stop talking to them, not ever, not even when they do something horrible, or stop breathing, or exist in some place you can’t see. Because their ghost stays with you forever, and you spend the rest of your life trying to say all the things you wish you had said when they were alive.

Losing Lea feels like there’s a knife forever twisting in my heart. It feels like walking up a stairway that never ends, and every new step gets harder and harder to climb. It feels like floating through space with no way of getting home. It feels hopeless.

There’s nobody in the world who would call Lea annoying. Not even me, and I’m usually annoyed by most things with faces.

I care that everything is changing. Everyone is moving on, and growing up, and I just feel so left behind.

One day you goin' wake up and find your anger has been replaced wit' loneliness, and i's mo' easy fo' stop being mad dan it is fo' stop being lonely.

She’s a shell. A ghost. I think her soul climbed into the coffin with Lea. I wish mine had done the same. Because at least then I wouldn’t feel so left behind.

It's like he's sterilized himself clean with every variation of mint known to man.

What if I die before I learn my favorite hot dog topping?