Chapter 1: The forgiveness

Think of how much your body has endured. Think of it as a tree, cut down and still growing, burnt down and still growing, overlooked and fallen and missed and still, unbelievably, growing. You bend like a willow with the weight of the world. You bend so beautifully. It is time to stop bending.

Chapter 2. : Do you remember the date we never went on

It’s warm in the art museum. Even outside it would still be warm as long as you stay close to him, whose hands might be their very own personal furnaces. The tip of your nose is still red from the winter wind. You’re standing shoulder to shoulder in front of a painting. The piece is called “our weeping woman.” For the first time you do not relate.

Chapter 3: Okay sure you can be the flower

It has taken you so long to bloom out of this terrible soil, taken you so long to drink the fresh rain and spit out the acidic dirt. They want to take this away.

“Either be pretty or be nothing.”

They forget that flowers can be pretty.

And flowers and can poisonous.

Chapter 4: Why is there blood in the bathroom

It sounded like a good idea to sew your mouth shut and wear a dress but now you can’t breathe and you have to cut through all this twine and there’s blood in your mouth, on the tile, in your hair. His body is a body you’ve seen before. Someone who can hurt and be hurt in return. So what if you don’t know if the blood is yours?

Chapter 5: 10 seconds to detonation

We all know the atomic bomb is bad for many reasons. That’s why nuclear weapons are illegal. But what if you’re a bomb, a different kind, a metaphorical kind. What if someone lights the fuse and explodes. What if people you love are in the blast zone. Maybe that’s why the calls and texts don’t get answered. Maybe you’re the fire, the ignition. And listen, a bomb is a bomb before it’s lit.

Chapter 6: Happiness is fleeting but so are we

When the sun rises in the morning, just before you get up and start getting ready for school you are suspended in this weird sliver of time where everything has just woken up and nothing feels heavy yet. You breathe and your lungs function as well as anyone else's. The air coming in from the open window is chilly and sweet and feels like hope.

He feels like that too.

Chapter 7: the ocean

Yout toes dip off the dock and suddenly every pulse in your body sings with a desire to jump in. The skin comes off in layers. He reaches out for a chance to catch you, but it’s hard to handle smoke, and so you slip under the waves. No siren song luring anyone to the deep, just a desire to make everything quiet for a long long time.

It doesn’t feel like wanting to die. It feels like wanting peace.

Chapter 8: Monday

You walk out to your car and your insides don’t twist up in anxiety. Everyone is already at school. The air is crisp and the sun is warm and you have hope flowing like liquid gold in your veins. This is how you start to understand the meaning of danger.

Chapter 9: Sharing is Caring

Look at all this love. Nurture it, let it grow. The earth is round because we haven’t figured out a way to change that yet. You are alone because we haven’t figured out how to change that yet. The more humans you add to the equation the more room there is for error.

Well, what counts as an error.

Chapter 10: What a story

Happiness tastes like fresh air. Happiness is the way your lungs stop constricting after you use your inhaler, the wind coming in from a sunroof, music on the radio. Dip your toes in the water or just jump all the way in. It took you 16 years to climb this mountain and you’re never going to come back down. Don’t write your ending before you’ve even started.