simplyyolivia:

Despite it all, the world is still a beautiful place. Do not allow the temporary clouds and shadows of life to convince you otherwise.

To you with the heart-shaped freckles,

You taught me that sharing music with someone
is inviting them to listen to pieces of you,
spent years teaching me which songs were celebrations, warnings.
In the same way that you can stop in the middle of a story
and swear you smell somewhere you’d been months before,
every song sounds a particular moment.

To you who never meant to collide into me,

With you, I learned the harmful power of a well-crafted playlist.
You mindlessly burrowed into my positioned arms
while I charmed you with bands you’d never heard of, played
guitar in your bedroom, whispered all the right lyrics into your hair.
After six months, I had made you fifty CDs, each one full of emptiness.
You loved them, but I didn’t love you.

To you with the smile I longed to crawl inside of,

When you handed me a four-disc guide into the audio root
of your dyed hair, lens-less glasses, bumblebee tattoo
and impeccable ability to bake a cobbler, I almost told you
that I’d spend the summer falling in love with you.
But because you aren’t supposed to love your high school best friend,
I stamped my favorite lyrics into my bike wheels and pedaled
up and down your street, hoping you’d notice. Each time
I listen, I love the 86 minutes of being the person you were thinking of.

To you, still screaming between my ears,

You taught me to read track-names like tealeaves.
The first mix you made me had three songs with “love” in the title,
and five more that featured it as a main theme.
I couldn’t not smile while listening.
It didn’t matter when you stopped saying it,
because I could still press loop on my stereo
and flood my apartment with your stale, thirteen-month old pulse.
The last disc you gave me began with a break-up song.
You covered your tracks with a haphazardly written note:
Don’t read into this, it doesn’t mean anything.

blankslate:

i tried to write about your eyes
but i ran out of cliches

i tried to say you plainly
but there wasn’t enough truth

whoever invented this language
didn’t anticipate you

As a whole, people suck. But a person can be extraordinary.

My dear, I don’t know what to do today, help me decide. Should I cut myself open and pour my heart on these pages? Or should I sit here and do nothing, nobody’s asking anything of me afterall. Should I jump off the cliff that has my heart beating so and develop my wings on the way down? Or should I step back from the edge, and let the others deal with this thing called courage. Should I stare back at the existential abyss that haunts me so and try desperately to grab from it a sense of self? Or should I keep walking half-asleep, only half-looking at it every now and then in times in which I can’t help doing anything but? Should I kill myself or have a cup of coffee? Falsely yours.

She didn’t understand that. “How can anyone be afraid of love?” “How can they not?” His face was completely aghast. “When you love someone… truly love them, friend or lover, you lay your heart open to them. You give them a part of yourself that you give to no one else, and you let them inside a part of you that only they can hurt—you literally hand them the razor with a map of where to cut deepest and most painfully on your heart and soul. And when they do strike, it’s crippling—like having your heart carved out. It leaves you naked and exposed, wondering what you did to make them want to hurt you so badly when all you did was love them. What is so wrong with you that no one can keep faith with you? That no one can love you? To have it happen once is bad enough… but to have it repeated? Who in their right mind would not be terrified of that?

Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.

I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life.

Deep rivers run quiet.

I’ve spent most of my life and most of my friendships holding my breath and hoping that when people get close enough they won’t leave, and fearing that it’s a matter of time before they figure me out and go.

You can erase someone from your mind. 
Getting them out of your heart is another story.


I drank coffee and read old books and waited for the year to end.