Unravel me

This planet is a broken bone that didn’t set right, a hundred pieces of crystal glued together. We’ve been shattered and reconstructed, told to make an effort every single day to pretend we still function the way we’re supposed to. But it’s a lie, it’s all a lie. I do not function properly. I am nothing more than the consequence of catastrophe.

Sometimes I wonder about glue. No one ever stops to ask glue how it’s holding up. If it’s tired of sticking things together or worried about falling apart or wondering how it will pay its bills next week.

Kenji laughs out loud. “My ass you’ve accepted it. You haven’t accepted anything.”

You hate being in your own skin. You can’t stand it. That’s not called acceptance. That’s called—I don’t know—the opposite of acceptance.

I will forever and ever and ever be alone because no one is safe from me.

Because sometimes you see yourself—you see yourself the way you could be—the way you might be if things were different. And if you look too closely, what you see will scare you, it’ll make you wonder what you might do if given the opportunity. You know there’s a different side of yourself you don’t want to recognize, a side you don’t want to see in the daylight. You spend your whole life doing everything to push it down and away, out of sight, out of mind. You pretend that a piece of yourself doesn’t exist. You live like that for a long time. For a long time, you’re safe. And then you’re not.

want to say mean things and angry things and hurtful things and I want to throw expletives in the air and run far, far away; I want to disappear into the horizon and I want to dump myself on the side of the road if only it will bring me toward some semblance of freedom but I don’t know where to go. I have nowhere else to go.

“Shit hitting the fan doesn’t work around your schedule, princess.”

“This isn’t how we wanted it to happen,” Castle says to me, “but these things never usually go according to plan.”

“Are you ready?” I say, “Yes.” Adam nods. Kenji says, “Let’s do this shit.”

“Just so you guys know,” Kenji interjects, “I’m still voting for the we don’t have to talk about this option. You know. Just so you know. Just putting that out there.”

“Yes. Right. Yes, of course. I almost forgot. Of course he wouldn’t be able to touch me,” you’re quite right, Mr. Castle, sir, what on earth was I thinking.

“Do you have any idea,” he says, so quietly, “how many times I’ve read this?” He lifts his hand but not his head and holds up a small, faded rectangle between 2 fingers. And I’m wondering how it’s possible to be punched in the gut by so many fists at the same time. My notebook.

I’m never quite certain whether or not I’m actually alive. So I sit here. I sit here every single day.”

He takes a deep breath. Looks down. Whispers, “I am so tired, love. I’m so very, very tired.”

If he truly is in love with you, you must be able to use that to our advantage somehow.

The books . . . they helped keep me from losing my mind altogether . . .

“It’s actually kind of luxurious. I think I’d like to get held hostage more often,”

“I think there’s something about the impermanence of life these days that makes it necessary to etch ink into our skin,” he says. “It reminds us that we’ve been marked by the world, that we’re still alive. That we’ll never forget.”

I want to unravel him.

“Is there ever going to be a time when some shitty thing isn’t being thrown in my face? Jesus. It’s like this insanity is never going to end.” I want to tell him that I don’t think it ever will.

“The truth,” he says, “is a painful reminder of why I prefer to live among the lies.”

“Let’s go let’s go let’s go!” Kenji interrupts us. “Today is our day to die, ladies.”