with all my heart

Don’t worry. The acne will go away, sort of. You will stop fighting with your sisters when they go to college. This will be because of two things: your inability to steal their clothing and the realization that they are older, cooler versions of you. Your bully will end up shaving her head and going to jail or she will become a lawyer and have a nice car and six babies. You will have no idea. You will forget what she looks like, remember her the way one remembers a splinter. You will stop loving sharp things. You will learn how to make your bed without being forced or threatened. You will break up with your high school sweetheart. I know, this is a surprise but trust me. It is the right thing. Yes, he loves you but it is a smothering love, the way a dog nurses an open wound, all bared teeth and tongues. When you leave him, it will not feel like crushing a light bulb in your hand — more like slowly, so slowly, removing glass from inside your palm. For years after him, you will let your heart hang open like a soup kitchen. This is not a bad thing, more a lesson in proportions. After graduation, you will change a hundred times over, like a revolving door, a waterfall. One day, you will learn how to give and receive love like an open window and it will feel like summer every day. One day, everything will make sense.

“MUST BRING PRESENTS TO GOOD CHILDREN”

She is making a list

You better watch out

I wasn’t actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity.

…what the light looks like in the pear trees, in October, is a hundred teardrops of gold, the whole orchard weeping.