ya

I worried I would miss it, and I knew, from losing Wyatt, that things happen the moment the soul is released. Wyatt had been there in the school, watching me, making sure I survived. Souls linger_they do. They linger a bit before they turn toward eternity. It could be that no matter how perfect their future will be, the past still tugs for a moment.

Look at this one._ I picked up a small painting of a man with dark hair and a short, dark beard. He wore a loose shirt, cobalt blue, unbuttoned at the top, showing a prominent, knobby collarbone. He looked_complicated and hungry. She__ captured him focused intensely on a book, his face pressed against a wall like he was resting. Or waiting.

My mom told me once that Wyatt loved her the way a boy will love his mother, but I loved her the way an artist loves another. Jo taught me what that meant.

I__ stumbled upon the inner sanctuary of a woman who loved the world. Loved the faces of people she saw. Loved the way a hand looked when it was relaxed. Loved the way a woman looked when she touched her own face. The way a man looked when he opened himself to her. Loved the way wind changed a tree or a field or a child__ hair. The beauty of a neck meeting a shoulder. The softness of a smile that wasn__ forced.

My chest clenched as I looked down at the oil-stained asphalt. Here but not. Existing but not living. I knew that feeling. Lived it for several years. Some days it felt like I was still wearing that feeling like a heavy jacket buttoned up too tightly.

Your best disguise is the strong impression your enemy has of you. Strong...and dead wrong.

In a world where PG 13 means kinda-sorta-depends on your level of morals, I don__ wish to loosen our kids_ morals just because some adults choose to say, __hey are going to see it anyway._ If we don__ show them that integrity is something you should always have in the back of your mind, then we__e given up on them.

The tattoo is there not because I believe there is something wrong with me. It's there to remind me that our flaws are our strengths

You can cower,_ she told them in a clear voice, wrapping her long shaking fingers around the cold iron bars. __ut I will stand.

Look, choosing to wait until marriage makes me feel empowered. But if the same choice cripples you, then it wasn't the right one.

To her, not packing our lunches every day or joining the PTA is a feminist rallying cry.

Gina was beautiful like a sunset. You see it and you think of how beautiful it is, and then it__ over and you move on. But Trista was beautiful like a song. The kind of song you play over and over and never get sick of hearing. The kind of song he wanted to write for her, but he knew he would never be able to string together the right combination of notes to show her how he really felt.

I didn't even notice that my shoes were full of mud by the time I reached the rocky shore. There was ragged yellow police tape tied to some branches, dancing in the wind. It was as if the tape was waving, welcoming me back to place where I would have died.

Nothing makes you think you might need years of therapy like saying the word breasts in front of your mother.

To be inspired is great, but to inspire is an honor.

You can't make a fan of everyone. Stay true to your story, characters, music, art or whatever it is you do and fuck everyone else who doesn't like it. Life isn't perfect.

Everything is inspiration. If you look at the world as the incredible place it is, then each moment is a feast.

I'm sorry," I heard him say again. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a sudden blur of movement as he slid out of his seat, left some bills for the breakfast he wouldn't eat, and walked away. And as he did, I thought again of those mornings in the hallway at school, way back in ninth grade. Everything had started in such sharp detail, each aspect pronounced and clear. Obviously, endings were different. Harder to see, full of shapes that could be one thing or another, with all the things that you were once so sure of suddenly not familiar, if they were even recognizable at all.