“Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.”

“The boy in the back room holds the mirror to his neck. You aren’t in love with him. At least, not yet. For now, he doesn’t know how to touch you with anything but his hands. And so it’s almost enough, and it’s more than you can stand. He is a Red Light District in and of himself. When he offers Indulgence like ambrosia, you lick it from his fingers and he thinks this is all he knows how to give. Teeth on his neck, hand between his thighs, you say you want his heart, but he doesn’t understand. He gives his mouth, instead. After that, the days ferment like apricot wine. You bite his lips the right kind of russet, make music of his spine. And then at night, you dream of plunging your fist through his ribs to tear out the songbird inside. But in the mornings, you do him violence with the softest parts of your hands. You find his sweetness. You make it yours, instead. We call this, surviving. We call this, sin. You’ll regret it, someday. But, right now, you aren’t in love with him. You aren’t in love with him. At least, not yet.”

And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him — hanya yanagihara

“Feelings are just visitors, let them come and go.”

because tonight you are not in the mood to have your heart ripped out. It gets old, having your heart ripped out, being opened up that way.

“I watch as your absence accumulates over my head like a heavy sky.”

“And isn’t love like that?—a shift / of attention the heart demands, a refocusing.”