This Is Where the World Ends

Miracles do not belong to religions. Miracles belong to the desperate, which is why every religion, every philosophy, and most importantly, every fairy tale always has a moment of salvation, a eureka, an enlightenment. We are all chasing and chasing tails, running and running in circles, until a wolf or the witch or the stepmother jumps out and trips us, and we fall flat, splat, and we lie bare and bleeding and breathless and finally, finally look and see whatever it is---salvation or eureka or enlightenment or a hunter or prince or a glass slipper---in front of us. And that's what miracles are. Not solutions, but catalysts. Not answers, but chances.

Miracles do not belong to fairy tales. Miracles belong to the desperate, because only the desperate believe in bullshit.

He is rainwater and smoke and wishes. He is honey and wind and bitter as truth and sharp with hurting and endlessly, unbearably sweet. He is air, finally, endlessly

You have to understand yourself before you can understand anything else.

Forgetting is the easy part. This should be unsurprising, but it surprises me. Forgetting was easy. Remembering is endless and it hurts, endlessly.

They never talked about it, but they both knew what they feared. More than anything, they feared they wouldn't have each other someday.

Life is messy and the universe has an awful lot of people to keep track of. Sometimes things get screwed up. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Sometimes good things happen to bad people. That isn’t fair. Bad things should happen to bad people. And they will. They will.

If there's one person in the world you should be with, there must be one person in the world you shouldn't be with.

We knew each other to our fingertips. No, that's not right. We only knew each other in our fingertips, and that was nothing at all, and for a while that was okay. We could have been a love story, a fairy tale, an indie film about high school and selective insanity featuring a boy of angel parts and a girl made of dreaming. We could have been all the best things: bracelets sliding down arms while shots slid down throats, laughter and crashing music in dark and flashing rooms, kisses that started hesitant but didn't stay that way.

Micah lives like an apology. He blushes when he breathes because he's taking someone else's air. It's like all Micah wants is to disappear, and he thinks if he's quiet enough, if he keeps his eyes on the ground and barely breathes and treads lightly, people will forget he exists.

There are things worth dying for.

There are no wicked queens or vengeful sorcerers, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t bad people. There are. There are some truly, truly shitty people out there.

I'm sitting here and I can still feel distance between us, just folded and crumpled and tangled. Our soul has stretch marks.

Sometimes they got lost. Sometimes they didn't want to be found. But it was a big forest and a bigger world, and whenever they went anywhere without each other, they left trails of stones that led all the way back to each other. Because they loved each other with the biggest love of all.

Like I said, the world isn't always fair, and sometimes we have to help it along.

No one’s going to be at our hundred-year reunion. Hell, no one’s coming back for the five-year reunion.” That was probably true.

I remember and then I don't. I forget and then it all comes rushing back.

Purification. You burn everything, you burn and burn and burn, and you start over.

If she loved them, if she loved anything, it was because it burned.

I could understand a world where she was in Nepal, though I couldn't figure out why she didn't text me back. I could understand a world where she was distant but not lost. I couldn't understand a world without her.

We are nervous laughter and fast breath and faster heartbeats, alive alive alive.

I do have a heart. A big, messy, bleeding-like-a-volcano heart. If you pulled it out of my chest, it would be covered in escaped butterflies and black holes and weeds that look like flowers.

Some things are easier to forget than other things, I'm noticing.

I like water, though. I like the way it waits, and when you touch it, it both moves away and clings to your finger. I like the way it rises, like memory, or fear.

I put my hand in my pocket and squeeze my rocks and wonder if there is a word for the marks you get on your palm when you squeeze something so hard that the skin is on the verge of ripping.

I used to think that destiny was fluid, because isn’t that the point of every Disney movie and Saturday-morning cartoon? You make your own choices. You decide how life goes. I always thought that your fate line would change if something happened, bam, something goes wrong and the line on your palm goes all wonky to reflect that. Nope. It still looks fine.

That’s what high school’s for. You make plans and you don’t follow through. You dream and you can be brave when you’re dreaming, brave enough to imagine that there’s actually a yourself to find, brave enough to finish projects even though you were never born with endings, brave enough to plan volunteer trips even though you’d probably be dead of asphyxiation by the time you’re there because you’re always holding your breath as if that can keep you together.

Whatever you do, whatever you redo, it all ends up here. Some things are just unavoidable. No matter how hard you try, the things meant to go to shit still go to shit. Terrible things happen, Micah, and you can't stop them. You just can't." So you just do more terrible things.