EPIGRAPH; FOREVER
❝Don't you dare, for one minute,
believe that my kindness makes me
anything but insurmountable.
I did not unzip my chest to every kind of hurt,
and stagger back, wounded and alive,
just to hear you call me weak for trying.
I opened my door to heartache—
I gave her the fucking key.
My softness for wayward strangers
has made me nothing less
than a halfway house for aching soles.
So when you open your mouth
and call me 'baby'
understand that i am not your next victim
in a laundry list of broken girls.
You think i don't know you? people like you?
people with mouths for hands.
I've got skin like topsoil
and your teeth could never take root.
So when you go looking to make a plaything
of a sunburst,
you better look for someone with less fire
than me.
Because softness or no,
I will eat you alive
before I let you make a meal of me.❞
– Softness by Ashe Vernon
••••
❝When they told her
her story was written in the stars
she went to the heavens
and crushed each one with her bare hands
stars have no power over her
the night sky is hers now
and she will carve it
with constellations of her own.❞
••••
❝One day you fall in love with this girl and she touches you with her fingers and she burns holes in your skin with her mouth and it hurts when you look at her and it hurts when you don't — and it feels like someone's cut you open with a jagged piece of glass.❞
••••
❝The boy who lived forever
spent a lifetime
looking for the soul he'd found in you.❞
– Atticus