The Dead Romantics

I'd always written how grief was hollow. How it was a vast cavern of nothing. But I was wrong. Grief was the exact opposite. It was full and heavy and drowning because it wasn't the absence of everything you lost - it was the combination of it all, your love, your happiness, your bittersweets, wound tight like a knotted ball of yarn. - Florence Day

I began to realize that love wasn't dead, but it wasn't forever, either. It was something in between, a moment in time where two people existed at the exact same moment in the exact same place in the universe.

Buying books always made me feel better, even if I never read them. - Florence Day

Love wasn't a whisper in the quiet night. It was a yelp into the void, screaming that you were here.

There is no happy ending, theres just. . . happily living. As best you can.

You don't ever lose the sadness, but you learn to love it because it becomes a part of you, and bit by bit, it fades. And eventually, you'll pick yourself back up and you'll find that you're okay. That you're going to be okay. And eventually, it will be true.

Not because I couldn't exist on my own, but sometimes I just didn't want to. Sometimes I just wanted to let my guard down, let the pieces of me fall to the ground, and know that I had someone there who could put me back together without minding the sharp bits.

Love is a celebration,’ ” I read, my voice wobbling, “ ‘of life and death. It stays with you. It lingers, my darlings, long after I’m gone. Listen for me when the wind rushes through the trees. I love you.

Everything that dies never really goes. In little ways, it all stays.

Because ghost stories were just love stories about here and then and now and when, about pockets of happiness and moments that resonated in places long after their era. They were stories that taught you that love was never a matter of time, but a matter of timing.

Would've, should've, could've. Hindsight is such a bitch.

Everything died, but pieces of it remained. Dad was in the wind because he breathed the same air that I breathed. Dad was a mark in history becuase he existed. He was part of my future because I still carried on.

I think, as readers, we all have a comfort read, the one book that protects us in the exact ways it needs to—whether it is a romance or erotica or a thriller or a crime story or a fantasy. A book that we find ourselves in, like looking in a mirror. Oh, you, too? It will ask, as it fills that soft, hollow place in your heart that nothing else dared to touch. I think we all deserve a book like that, whatever yours is.

The universe sends you the things you need when you need them.

I can't begin to express how much your book helped me. I could open it and get lost in your words, and in those moments, it felt like everything would be okay. So, thank you for giving me words when I didn't think there were any left. I hope you never stop giving the world your words.

Speaking of lowest, I would also like to give a very enthusiastic fuck you to my anxiety. Thanks for, as always, being the worst.

Because loneliness was the kind of ghost that haunted you long after you were dead. It stood over your plot in the cemetery where a lone name sat carved in marble. It sat with your urn. It was the wind that carried your ashes when no one claimed your body.

I hope you find yourself in a book someday. And I hope that book lives forever.

In my experience, women with sharp tongues usually have soft lips.

All of it. Pretending to be okay while the world changes around you and leaves you behind to sit with whatever loss you found.

I hated that I cried when I was angry, or upset, or annoyed. I hated that I cried at the slightest flux of emotional nuance. I hated how helpless I felt. I hated how I wanted to both march up to him and give him a fistful of my thoughts and run as far away from him as I could.

I knew you once,” he said so ardently, it made my heart flutter. “I think you still do,” I whispered,

Your grandma- my mother- told me once that the wind is just the breath of everyone who came before us. All the people who've passed on, all the ones who've taken a breath-" And he took a breath himself, loud and dramatic, and exhaled. "They're still in the wind. And they'll always be in the wind, singing. Until the wind is gone. Do you hear them?

We were an author of love stories and an editor of romances, weaving a story about a boy who was once a little ghostly and a girl who lived with ghosts. And maybe, if we were lucky, we’d find a happily ever after, too.

We might've been a family in black, but our lives were filled with light and hope and joy.

I began to realize that love wasn’t dead, but it wasn’t forever, either. It was something in between, a moment in time where two people existed at the exact same moment in the exact same place in the universe.

They fought and disagreed, of course, but they always came back together like a binary star, dancing with each other through life.

Giving you Annie's legacy and watching it flourish was under your pen was a blessing. And this? And suddenly this no longer felt like a conversation. It felt like a goodbye. These last few days have been beautiful. It's a good ending, darling. And as your editor I have no notes

I feel like we’ve done a few of these . . .” “But I could never touch you.” “I’d be okay with that.” “No one else will ever see me.” “That means you’d be all mine.

I bought things when I was nervous. Mainly books but—I guess now I bought houseplants, too.