Top Final Sentences of 2024
1.There was this girl, and she told me she loved the smell of petrichor…" Maureen Johnson, from Death at Morning House
2. It occurs to me that, like everyone else, I have only one home. Deepa Rajagopalan, from “The Many Homes of Kanmani”
3. If they will never see anything but a monster when they look at me, then it’s a monster I’m going to give them. H.E. Edgmon, from Godly Heathens
4. I know it’s hard But it’s time you were comfortable in your own skin Everything is happening as it is supposed to With hidden blessings that you will soon understand And whatever happens, remember, I did, I do, and I will always Love you. Isabella Fillspipe, from “Dear Past Self” AND
See what happens if you try. Andrew Joseph White, from Compound Fracture
5. And finally, I wasn’t who I was at seventeen anymore. Marina Diamandis, from “Aspartame”
6. I have the privilege of another day. Patty Stonefish, from “It Could Have Been Me” 7. Go eat a fucking sandwich and throw your scale away Work out if you want to, lay on the couch if you want to No one else lives in your body You are enough, as you are, today. Mary Lambert, from “Margaritas”
8. He looked up at the empty clouds, and as he died he wondered, not for the first time but for the very last, why it should be that we are made for a bright world, but live in a dark one. Lev Grossman, from The Bright Sword
9. May you find —as one tortured poet knew— That Icarus also flew. Ilya Kaminsky, from “Of Flight”
10. I say, May you go shopping for cleaning supplies but come home with poems. Melissa Studdard, from “When You Rise from the Dead, I Drive You to the After Party"
AND
She pulls me to her and we push off, over the hill, and at long last, it feels like taking flight. Christina Li, from True Love and Other Impossible Odds
11. They all three came together where the land met the sea. Rose Sutherland, from A Sweet Sting of Salt
12. I mean it this time. Dustin Brookshire, from “Poem in Which I Realize That One Day I Won’t Miss You”
13. never let them know that the next person to reach their hands into your chest may look at you in awe, at how surprisingly breakable you are, how you have survived this long. Mary Lambert, from “Tips for Fat Girls”
14. Because there’s no future without a past. Abdi Nazemian, from Like a Love Story
15. Don’t waste one second of it living for anyone but yourself. Drew Afualo, from Loud
16. nothing is relentless but the sea. Ming Lauren Holden, from “can she breathe?”
AND
I imagined staring across from you at our dining room table thinking about how I could best love you. Mary Lambert, from “Written at Our Dining Room Table”
AND
I looked kind of happy for someone who was drowning. Mary Lambert, from “The Last Time It Was Good”
17. "And in the end, if you’re really smart and really brave, the only reward you get is the chance to finally start being alive." Naomi Kanakia, from Just Happy to Be Here
AND
Perhaps. Jennifer Lynn Barnes, from The Grandest Game
AND
I was smiling when he cradled my face in his hands and kissed me. Melissa Albert, from The Bad Ones
18. I am throwing up, I am throwing up my Hands, I do I do want to know how clouds are made, I like pink and I want a yard I tattoo flowers on my arm and I missed it all Jesus I missed everything. Mary Lambert, from “Grown”
AND
Mors vincit omnia. Andrew Joseph White, from The Spirit Bares Its Teeth
19. i coax my bones to rise, talk to them as children hushed; pleading. Andrea Simpson, from “Ophelia, Mania from the Willow Tree”
AND
This time, I’m keeping him. Casey McQuiston, from The Pairing
AND
We don’t choose their arrival
But we choose our response, so we might
as well greet them and treat them like friends. Marina Diamandis, from “E-motion”
20. But I opened my arms and I let Wreck in because every one of us gets to choose what kind of monster we become. Sam J. Miller, from “Boys Who Run with the Boars”
AND
And Nina smiles because she knows she did the best she could. Mark Oshiro, from “Wasps”
