Maria Dahvana Headley

“You are strong enough to sing as you wish, not as your pain has forced you to. You aren't your hurt. You're other than that. You are not the broken things you've been.”

“I was a protestor. I was such a protestor that I regularly protested things that might have been good for me.”

“I can't imagine a universe in which I try to unlove her.”

“Maybe we're brokenhearted, but why isn't it rational to have a broken heart? It is utter shit out there, the things you can't control. The world is full of wrongs, and mess and distress and horror. Who can really be blamed for wanting to dig their way down and live in a hole, or disappear into a cave and never be around humans again? If all people do is hurt each other?”

“I like the sky. It’s rational to me in a way that life isn’t. Looking at it doesn’t suck the way you might think it would, given all the dying-girl-stares-at-heaven possibilities. I don’t think of the sky as any kind of heaven item. I think of it as a bunch of gases and faraway echoes of things that used to be on fire”

“I'm dark matter. The universe inside of me is full of something, and science can't even shine a light on it. I feel like I'm mostly made of mysteries.”

“I know everyone has dreams of flying, but this isn’t a dream of flying. It’s a dream of floating, and the ocean is not water but wind. I call it a dream, but it feels realer than my life.”

“You are strong enough to sing as you wish, not as your pain has forced to. You aren't your hurt. You're other than that. You are not the broken things you've been.”

“I think of the note.I want to say me too.I want to say I know.I want to say I can read the gaps in your sentences. I can read the space between your letters. I know your language. It’s my language too.I want to say that.”

“I can hear my mom.I can hear her take a deep breath. I hear her pushing words out, and I can almost see her, for a second, the look on her face, her hand pressed to her own heart, the other in a fist."You can go if you have to go," my mom says, and her voice shakes, but she's solid. She says it again, so I'll know. "You can go if you have to go, okay, baby? Don't wait for me. I love you, you're mine, you'll always be mine, and this is going to be okay, you're safe, baby, you're safe-"...And after that? There's nothing.”