Ellie

“He is altogether selfish, she thought in some surprise, the only man I have ever sat and talked to alone,
and I am impatient; he is simply not very interesting. "Why don't you grow up by yourself?" she asked
him, and wondered how many people—how many women—had already asked him that.”
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

“The decisions that we're making and not making, the things we can control and the things we can't -- they are huge. And people can choose to forget how it was for them, or they can remember. They can half-listen to us and roll their eyes when we leave because we are young and we have no fucking clue what we're doing. Or they can actually listen, and they can think about themselves when they were like us, and maybe we can bring some pieces of then back.' And now my eyes are welling up, my hands are trembling. 'Because we lose it,' I say. 'We grow up and we lose ourselves.”
― Nina LaCour and David Levithan

“Artichokes

Until you had been the last ones
sitting in the cafe on the corner and
she has kissed the dark rum from the
rim of your glass and schooled you in
the art of eating artichokes

until then,
you are not yet a woman.

Until you put soft leaf to lip
touch tongue to flesh,
bite the lobe,
swallow the juice
she says will purify you
until you open it up, sigh at the color,
see it’s very middle and learn what
fingers are best at
until you reach further still
into that thick, hot heart
life has not yet started.

Before you had been promised.
Before she is a liar.
Before you are dismantled, fixed and
broke again you are not yet a lover.

Remember on the right night and
under the right light
any idea can seem like a good one
and love
love is mostly ill-advised but always
brave.

The most important thing to do is
not to worry. The lines on your face
will never stop the sun from coming
up. Your tears cannot affect the
weather. There are wars going on.
The one in your body is the only one
you can be sure of losing
or winning, then losing again.

You drink more water than rum these
days, don’t you?
But you drink to her memory, don’t
you?
And you only take artichokes in salad.
Never whole.
Not in a cafe on a dusky street at
midnight.
Not with her.
Never with her, or anyone like her.”
― Yrsa Daley-Ward, bone

“You're becoming. You're in the process of becoming. You just don't know what yet.
That felt right. It felt okay to stop there, for now, as we walked through the future.”
― David Levithan, You Know Me Well