I knew a boy once, though not very well, who asked me to tell him a story. Have you ever met a story? If you have, then you already know that all they want is to be told.

we’re driving our own cars to my least favourite place, with the same album playing loud through our speakers, and i can’t see you but i know you’re smiling wide. nobody could ever get between us on the highway. i let my hazard lights blink - just three times. my back windows light up and repeat the pattern. this could be a fucking movie scene, you know that?

I was alive in that moment

“I’ll meet you in Paris, inside a house with twenty windows to watch all of France and hours uncounted we’ll use to dance. Void of hatred–in gold, we’re dressed and doused. The black rose squints as morning light pours in, stretches her arms to a sky not yet seen by two wandering, gilded eyes–gleaming, still dreaming, hiding from secrets and sin. ‘Meet me in Paris,’ you said with your hands, the same ones that always told my future. This time in a tangible world, an ending ensues. The black rose is smiling again. This time, time continues to fall over, but memory endures: we’re everlasting.”

“Make love to me in Spanish. Not with that other tongue. I want you juntito a mí, tender like the language crooned to babies. I want to be that lullabied, mi bien querido, that loved. I want you inside the mouth of my heart, inside the harp of my wrists, the sweet meat of the mango, in the gold that dangles from my ears and neck. Say my name. Say it. The way it’s supposed to be said. I want to know that I knew you even before I knew you.”

“Do not fall in love with people like me. I will take you to museums, and parks, and monuments, and kiss you in every beautiful place, so that you can never go back to them without tasting me like blood in your mouth. I will destroy you in the most beautiful way possible. And when I leave you will finally understand, why storms are named after people.”

“Each of us has something to do in this lifetime. We all have negative emotions to be purified and positive emotions to be cultivated. All of us need to reconnect to our source and drop our personal stories, don’t we? Men, women, old, young, from here, from there - it is the same. All you can do is your practice. There is nothing else. Don’t get caught up. Don’t stop. We have to learn how to get out or our own way. Because ultimately, the only thing standing in our way is ourselves.”

“Scars. A sign that you had been hurt. A sign that you had healed.”