Isabelle D

“Sometimes you’re 23 and standing in the kitchen of your house making breakfast and brewing coffee and listening to music that for some reason is really getting to your heart. You’re just standing there thinking about going to work and picking up your dry cleaning. And also more exciting things like books you’re reading and trips you plan on taking and relationships that are springing into existence. Or fading from your memory, which is far less exciting. And suddenly you just don’t feel at home in your skin or in your house and you just want home but “Mom’s” probably wouldn’t feel like home anymore either. There used to be the comfort of a number in your phone and ears that listened every day and arms that were never for anyone else. But just to calm you down when you started feeling trapped in a five-minute period where nostalgia is too much and thoughts of this person you are feel foreign. When you realize that you’ll never be this young again but this is the first time you’ve ever been this old. When you can’t remember how you got from sixteen to here and all the same feel like sixteen is just as much of a stranger to you now. The song is over. The coffee’s done. You’re going to breath in and out. You’re going to be fine in about five minutes.”
― Kalyn Roseanne Livernois, High Wire Darlings

“She’d invested in the spell of a promise by making especially significant words like always and forever. There was no such thing. To believe in nothing, to have no need of belief — that was growing up. What would she give up for that sober maturity, where all was dispelled but the present? What would she give up to truly believe always was only an idea, not even an intelligent one? Nature was right out the door, offering a daily example of flux and impermanence.”
― Alice Elliott Dark, Fellowship Point

“Was Nan dressed warmly enough for such a chilly day? I had been judicious in my warning and instructions, phrasing them so as not to scare her or inhibit her. I’m determined not to teach her to fear everything, as we were taught, or that manners are preferable to feelings. I honestly don’t yet know what free is, but I know what it isn’t. I decided to trust that if she were cold, she’d seek warmth.”
― Alice Elliott Dark, Fellowship Point