Courtney M. Privett

I write to prove that we lived. I write both to remember and to let go. I write because I can't stop, not until this horrible story of ours is over and we're safe at home.

We are meant to love. We are meant to lose. Love is our promise of a bittersweet end, and our desperate, hopeless struggle not to hurt anyone along the way.

What do you live for when everyone and everything you love is gone? Do you keep going, keep stumbling through the dark, or do you find something new to cherish? Maybe neither. Maybe you walk silently and ignore the blows time takes on your heart.

Inside all of us is a light, but some beacons are darker than others, and some are so dark they never realize they are a form of light at all.

I focus on the light I can find, and if I can't find it, I create it.

The tear-stained letters of my regret will remain forever unread, for I am never going to be strong enough to give them to you.

There is something intimate about playing a duet. It's touching the soul of another person without ever touching the flesh.

History is the lie. History's words stain otherwise pristine books, drops of inky poison frosted in sugared deception.

Only the dead remember the truth.

What is love if not the gravity of souls?

Innocence has no place alongside immortality.

What is it like to be so free - so trapped, but so free? What kind of bird sings only when caught? What kind of slave outshines and rises above her master?

There are no stars, no moon, only knots, only the promise of death. Drums cry out in the abyss and then fade with everything else. Even the shadows fade and all that is left is death. We are all dead, we just haven't figured it out yet.

We are all dead, we just haven't figured it out yet.

We are not meant to spend the rest of our lives underground. We need to go home and tell a strange story that no one will believe.

Lies are convenient when the truth is unfathomable.

Hate feeds on your heart and pollutes your mind. It makes you lose sight of reality and forces you to focus on animosity instead of love. Hate makes you less of a person, because the borders of hate are so expansive they leave no room for anything else, and then the rest of your world becomes tiny and insignificant in comparison.