#quoteblr

“I wanted to tell you that wherever I am, whatever happens, I’ll always think of you, and the time we spent together, as my happiest time. I’d do it all over again, if I had the choice. No regrets.”

― Cynthia Hand, Boundless

“Days will pass, and you’ll abandon things you were addicted to, and leave someone, and cancel a dream, and finally, accept a reality.”

― Nizar Qabbani

can I sleep yet? can I take this moment, here, and freeze it, set it on a shelf next to the books I’ve never read and now never will? tuck my head under the covers and pretend for a night? (I can, but should I?) 

—m.j.

Heaven knows I miss you, like a book misses a reader and a train misses its passengers, like the ocean misses the waves and like the sky misses the stars on a cloudy night. I miss you so much that it aches.

—m.j.

Can I hold your hand? Not here, not now, but in another lifetime, perhaps. A closer lifetime.

—m.j.

The good days come and go. Today, I wrote a note to my grandmother, and brushed the cat, and remembered to wash my face before bed. Today was a good day.

—m.j.

But the sky is dark, the thunder is deafening, and I can’t hear anyone, anymore. (Scream louder. I’m listening.)

—m.j.

I knew it would always hurt, but I didn’t know it would hurt like this. (Make it stop? Can anyone make it better?)

—m.j.

there’s a storm on the horizon, too broad to fathom. the wind has picked up, sent raindrops running across the windows. (come home, love, ride out the storm with me.)

—m.j.

the waves crashed over the bridge today, and I in my car felt small, pressed up against the impersonal face of the ocean.

—m.j.

tonight I will think quietly, madly, on everything I have said and far more terribly everything I have not said. 

—m.j.

the leaves still hang from the trees, defiantly, blindingly green. the sun still sets late, burning the ground hard and dry for too many hours. summer clings like static to the city, in mirages of puddles and too few clouds. it isn’t autumn yet. I don’t know if it ever will be. (and then comes winter.)

—m.j.

something about now seems magic, a tiny otherworldliness falling out of the most ordinary of moments. (maybe it’s the weather, or maybe it’s you.)

—m.j.

and she said I love you, and I said I believe you. (that was the first pair of lies.)

—m.j.

a tight hug, a big grin, your unrestrained laughter. maybe there are things worth living for after all.

—m.j.

here’s hoping you can put on a movie soon, pull up blankets with your friends and pour too much butter on a bowl of popcorn. here’s hoping for autumn, for the future, for more than what we have now.

—m.j.

if you haven’t heard today, I’m proud of you. read that in your mother’s voice, your father’s voice, your eighth grade English teacher’s voice when she read Romeo and Juliet to you for the first time. read it in the voice you need to hear. I’m proud of you.

—m.j.

you’ll get tired, you know, of living every day as a battle. swords clang too loudly in your ears, voices that are not your own shout in your head. I’ll fight with you. war’s easier when you’re not alone.

—m.j.

we don’t talk anymore, really, but you’re listening to your happy playlist right now. I hope you’re well. 

—m.j.

sometimes things are just [when saywecanfly said “it’s a rainy day in his heart and all the lights burned out” and when the ghost of paul revere said “it’s been raining now since I don’t know when” and motion city soundtrack said “and we feel like rain when the words all sound the same, and the curtain closes on another day” and when twenty one pilots said “rain down and destroy me]

she tattooed a cherry blossom over her heart, and called it happiness. and she inked nettles around her wrist, and called it determination. and mint wrapped up her ribs, named perseverance, and she hoped the flowers would grow into her heart so she’d share their names, too.

—m.j.

it aches, still, everywhere that people have left. that sort of hurt doesn’t go away, not really, leaving burns and tears on soft skin where someone had been stuck for years. you showed me that song for the first time, driving in my mom’s car late at night, do you remember? and you dog-eared your books. and maybe the password to my old phone that doesn’t turn on anymore is still your birthday, because we joked I was terrible with dates. it aches, all of it.

—m.j.

I wonder, again, how much of me is out there. whose fingernails I’m still stuck under, who catches me in their head like a Top 40’s song, if anyone, anyone at all remembers.

—m.j.

great things once meant to conquer the world, to become history. how odd, how quickly that all melted away when I saw you for the first time.

—m.j.

once again I find myself aching to be palatable, to be small. how I wish I could be comfortable in my vastness.

—m.j.

it rained today, just for a bit. it reminded me of you. you were like that, too: fleeting and joyful. the clouds left just as quickly as you did.

—m.j.

how should I say goodbye to you? when you were only ever one thing to me—home.

—m.j.

reach up and fix my collar for me, just this once, and that would be enough. 

—m.j.

I’ve finally found someone to write clichés about; your eyes really do sparkle in the sunlight, you know. 

—m.j.

I would leave it all, just to spend forever here by your side. is that love? or madness?

—m.j.

once again, I find myself watching you—your hands, your eyes, your smile. how strange, to love someone so wholly captivating.

—m.j.

If we never meet again, love, I pray you remember me by the small things—fluffy clouds, a penny on the concrete, or the way you feel when you sing our favourite song.

—m.j.

and how proudly he shone in the daylight, and how brightly he glowed in the night.

—m.j.

we’re in a bed I do not know, but we are together. so, for tonight, this is home.

—m.j.

is there a name for a nightmare that slips into a daydream, silver-bell thoughts tarnished and burned with thoughts best left relegated to the night? the clang of the waking carillon drowns out too much, but the steam-whistle shriek of a black thought in a golden haze cuts through. is there a name for hell that chases around the clock?

—m.j.

the radio stations here are not like home. the voices crackling through the radio are unfamiliar, chipper in a manner I do not trust. the numbers, too, are strange, decimals off from normal, fractions that may as well be chasms. the music plays without meaning.

—m.j.

there is something to be said for how radionuclides decay into daughters. there is something there, to me, something buried in a daughter being a product of rot and of time and of pressure. there is a pain I know all too well hidden in tracing billions of years back through time in the scars of another decayed daughter.

—m.j.

is it loneliness or hopefulness that pounds against my ribs, staring up at the stars and asking “are you out there? can you hear me?”

do I want to be alone? do I dare hope for an answer?

—m.j.