Isn't it funny how the memories you cherish before a breakup can become your worst enemies afterwards? The thoughts you loved to think about, the memories you wanted to hold up to the light and view from every angle--it suddenly seems a lot safer to lock them in a box, far from the light of day and throw away the key. It's not an act of bitterness. It's an act if self-preservation. It's not always a bad idea to stay behind the window and look out at life instead, is it?

Cassia.I know which life is my real one now, no matter what happens. It’s the one with you. For some reason, knowing that even one person knows my story makes things different. Maybe it’s like the poem says. Maybe this is my way of not going gentle.I love you. (Ky Markham)

Everyone has something of beauty about them. But loving lets you look, and look, and look again. You notice the back of a hand, the turn of a head, the way of a walk. When you first love, you look blind and you see it all as the glorious, beloved whole, or a beautiful sum of beautiful parts. But when you see the one you love as pieces, as why's, you can love those parts too, and it's a love at once more complicated and more complete.

That’s how I know they are dreams. Because the simple and plain and everyday things are the ones that we can never have. (Cassia Reyes)

Love changes what is probable and makes unlikely things possible.

And I'll tell her that I don't want my life to be samples and scraps. A taste of everything but a meal of nothing.

In the end you can't always choose what to keep. You can only choose how you let it go.

Writing, painting, singing- it cannot stop everything. Cannot halt death in its tracks. But perhaps it can make the pause between death’s footsteps sound and look and feel beautiful, can make the space of waiting a place where you can linger without as much fear. For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey there between footsteps makes up our lives.

at first when the rain fell from the sky so wide and deepit smelled like sage, my favorite smellI went up on the plateau to watch it cometo see the gifts it always broughtbut this rain changed from blue to black and leftnothing.

Lightning. Once it has forked, hot-white, from sky to earth, there is no going back

He's in pain. I am, too. It strikes me that perhaps this is part of what we are fighting to choose. Which pain we feel.

But then I realize that even if I did have a soul, it’s not as though someone else would be there. It would only be more of me.

Ever since the day of the mistake with my Match. I've never known which life is my true one. Even with the reassurances of the Offical that day in the greenspace, I think a part of me hasn't felt at peace. It was as though I saw for the first time that life could branch into different paths, take different directions.

I want to reach out and grab his hand and hold it to me, right over my heart, right where it aches the most. I don't know if doing that would heal me or make my heart break entirely, but either way this constant hungry waiting would be over.

...I do not know how I can feel this much pain and survive, and at the same time know how much I have to live.

Now that I've found the way to fly, which direction should I go into the night?

The only chance of success is to trust in your own power.

Some people think the stars must look closer from up here. They don't. When you're up here, you realize how distant they really are—how impossible to reach.

Some people think the stars must look closer from up here. They don't.When you're up here, you realize how distant they really are--how impossible to reach.

Reaching and reached. Cassia

I wonder if I will ever have the strength to hold onto something. Or if I will always be someone who destroys.

Do not go gentle. So I fight. I fight the only way I know how.

Sometimes paper is only paper," my mothers says. "Words are just words. Ways to capture the real thing. Don't be afraid to remember that."I know what she means. Writing, painting, singing--it cannot stop everything. Cannot halt death in its tracks. But perhaps it can make the pause between death's footsteps sound and look and feel beautiful, can make the space of waiting a place where you can linger without as much fear. For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey there between footsteps makes up our lives.

She's right. We would compose poems about love and tell stories that have been heard in some form before. But it would be our first time feeling and telling.

Writing, painting, singing--it cannot stop everything. Cannot halt death in its tracks. But perhaps it can make the pause between death's footsteps sound and look and feel beautiful, can make the space of waiting a place where you can linger without as much fear. For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey there between footsteps makes up our lives.

At first, that's who I was. I wanted to know more about this boy who lives among us, but who never truly speaks... But now I feel like finding out about him is one of the ways I found out about myself. I did not expect to love his words. I did no expect to find myself in the.

For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey between footsteps makes up our lives

They both have in common their conviction that they are still learning, still growing, when in fact they have long ago lost that ability.

I can trust in my parents' love. And it strikes me that is a big thing to trust, a big thing to have had, no matter what else happens.

Sometimes you can't speak, not because others won't let you, but because you are afraid of what you'll say.

Because I feel no anger toward my mother. Only loss, and loss is a feeling you can’t fight your way out of as easily.

You always have something left to lose. Until, of course, you die.

Nothing is really lost as long as you remember it

I draw in a ragged breath, the kind you take when the pain is too deep to cry, when you can't cry because all you are is pain, and if you let some of it out, you might cease to exist. I want to do something to make this better, even though I know that nothing can change the fact of my father gone and under ground.

It is strange how we hold on to the pieces of the past while we wait for our futures.

Inside me are the real things that give me strength—my thoughts, the small stones of my own choosing. They tumble in my mind, some polished from frequent turning, some new and rough, some that cut.

The pain wants to eat me away. I wish I could have one without the other, but that's the problem with being alive. You don't usually get to choose the measure of suffering or the degree of joy you have.

We need you.""I'm sorry, but I can't let that keep me here anymore.

I'll go over again and again until I've finally crossed to where he is

All of the things that were shown in early studies to be good for longevity—happy marriages, healthy bodies—are ours to have. We live long,good lives. We die on our eightieth birthdays, surrounded by our families, before dementia sets in. Cancer, heart disease, and most debilitatingillnesses are almost entirely eradicated. This is as close to perfect as any society has ever managed to get.

For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey between footsteps makes up our lives.

If you love someone, if someone loved you, if they taught you to write and made it so you could speak, how can you do nothing at all? You might as well take their words out of the dirt and try to snatch them from the wind.Because once you love, it is gone. You love and you cannot call it back.

Ky gives me three gifts for my birthday. A poem, a kiss and the hopeless, beautiful belief that things might work. When I open my eyes... I say, "I didn't give you anything for your birthday, i don't even know when it is." And he says, "Don't worry about that" and I say, "What can I do?" and he answers, "Let me believe in this, all of this, and you believe it too."And I do.

What did you think about?" I wish I could tell him that I thought about him, but I lied to him once and I won't do it again. And besides, I wasn't thinking about Xander either. "I thought about angels," I say."Angels?""You know. The ones in the old stories. How they can fly to heaven." "Do you think anyone believes in them anymore?" He asks."I don't know. No. Do you?""I believe in you," he says, his voice hushed and almost reverent. "That's more faith than I ever thought I'd have.

It's been so long since I've let myself feel anger that I don't just feel it. It covers my mouth and I swallow it down, the taste sharp and metal as though I'm gnawing through foilware.

But if you were matched," I say softly, "What do you think she'd be like?""You," he says, almost before I've finished. "You,

This is a difficult balance, telling the truth: how much to share, how much to keep, which truths will wound but not ruin, which will cut too deep to heal.

Until now, I've never been able to see while I fly, and I feel a dizzying lightness as I look out at the land bel

No,' she says, as if the suggestion is ridiculous. 'I wouldn't go back to where I'm from. I'd go someplace I've never been.

Good-bye,” I say to Grandfather, and to my father, and I hold the tube in the river and pause a moment. We hold the choices of our fathers and mothers in our hands and when we cling on or let them slip between our fingers, those choices become our own.

Did you know Grandfather would give the poems to me?” I ask.“We thought he might,” my mother says.“Why didn’t you stop him?”“We didn’t want to take away your choices,” my mother says.“But Grandfather never did tell me about the Rising,” I say.“I think he wanted you to find your own way,” my mother says. She smiles. “In that way, he was a true rebel. I think that’s why he chose that argument with your father as his favorite memory. Though he was upset when the fight happened, later he came to see that your father was strong in choosing his own path, and he admired him for it.

They were too much to carryso i left them behindfor a new life, in a new placebut no one forgot who i wasi didn'tand neither did the people who watchthey watched for yearsthey watch now

It strikes me that perhaps this is part of what we are fighting to choose. Which pain to feel.

I never needed the Society," she says, "to Match me." (-Lei)

It was a little thing, a baby tree, but still it tangled with things around it and required care to move. And when she pulled it out, it's roots still clung to Earth from it's old home.

The earth reflects the sky and the sky meets the earth and, every now and then, if we're lucky, we have a moment to see how small we are.

...there's a difference between knowledge and technology. Knowledge don't fail us.

For one entire day I let his kiss burn on my cheek and into my blood and I don't push the memory away... This kiss, these words, they feel like beginning.

Thank you," I tell Xander. "I didn't get anything for you -""It's all right," he says, "but maybe - you could -"He looks into my eyes and I know what he wants. A kiss. Even thought he knows about Ky. Xander and I are still connected; this is still good-bye. I know already that that kiss would be sweet. It would be what he would hold on to, as I hold on to Ky's.But that's something I don't think I can give. "Xander -""It's all right," he was, and then he stands up. I do too, and he reaches for me, pulls me close.

If you stay here, you become lost. And no one can find you. I like lost.

I keep telling myself that, and most of the time I believe it.

They could not write their names, but I can write mine, and I will again, somewhere where it will last for a long, long time. I will find Ky, and then I will find that place.

I don't know what happens after we die. It doesn't seem to me like there can be much past this. But I suppose I can conceive that what we make and do can last beyond us. Maybe in a different place, on another plane.

He watches the sun out of the world and the stars into it and sometimes I wonder if he watches the sun come up again. Is it hard to sleep when you know you are almost at the end? Do you not want to miss a moment, even those that would otherwise seem dull and unremarkable?

So I fight. I fight the only way I know, with thinking of Ky, even thought the pain of missing him is so strong I can hardly stand it... I think of him, I think of him, I think of him.

I have tried to be righteous all my life. Yet I have never been content.

Any other questions?""Just one," I say. "What color are your eyes?" I want to know what he thinks, how he sees himself - the real Ky - when he dares to look."Blue," he says sounding surprised, "they've always been blue.""Not to me.""What do they look like to you?" he says puzzled, amused. Not looking at my mouth anymore, looking into my eyes."Lots of colors," I say. "At first I thought they were brown. Once I thought they were green...""What are they now?" he asks. He widens his eyes a little, leans closer, lets me look as long and deep as I want."Well?""Everything," I tell him, "They're everything.

Blue is the most common eye color in Oria Province, but there is something different about his eyes and I'm not sure what it is. More depth? I wonder what he sees when he looks at me. If he seems to have depth to me, do I seem shallow and transparent to him?

The Society wants us to be afraid of dying. But I'm not. I'm only afraid of dying wrong.

It dances on the air for a moment before it falls, too. A fresh gust of wind almost saves it, but a worker catches sight of it and lifts a tube up to suck the paper from the air, to suck the words from the sky.I'm sorry, Grandfather.

And it is strange that absence can feel like presence.

I'm so

Once you want something, everything changes. Now I want everything. I feel it so much that I am water, a river of want,pooled in the shape of a girl.

The rain turns lighter, turns to snow. And I have a sense that we have not yet arrived, that we are still reaching. For each other. For who we are meant to be.

People can be miracles.

There is so much want. I feel it so much that I am water, a river of want, pooled in the shape of a girl named Cassia.

I draw in a ragged breath, the kind you take when the pain is too deep to cry, when you can't cry because all you are is pain, and if you let some of it out, you might cease to exist.

I know how it feels when people look right through you, or worse, see you as something or someone other than what you are.

Ky still looks at me and I wonder for a moment if he is going to ask me what I am thinking about. But of course, he doesn't. He doesn't learn things by asking questions... He learns by watching.

I'm falling in love. I am in love. and it's not with Xander, though I do love him. I'm sure of that, as sure as I am of the fact what I feel for Ky is something different.

Everyone dies. The don't all have the chance to see what they wanted most. At least I've seen the Above. At least I've known True.

What are the gifts given to we who live Below?""Long life, health, strength, and happiness.""What is the curse of those who live Above?""Short life, illness, weakness, and misery.""Is this fair?""It is fair. It is as the gods decreed at the time of the Divide. Some have to stay Above so that humanity might survive Below.""Then give thanks.

So much of life is in the smallness of moments...but they are harder to mark. So we need the grander celebrations and occasions. People like to feel significant

I love you."lightning. Once it has forked, hot-white, from sky to earth, there is no going back.It's time. I feel it, I know it. My eyes on him, his on me, and both of us breathing, watching, tired of of waiting. Ky close his eyes, but mine are still open. what will it feel like, his lips on mine? Like a secret told, a promise kept? Like that line in the poem-a shower of all my days- silvery rain falling all around me, where the lighting meets the earth? The whistle blows below us and the moment breaks. We are safe.For now.

He's throwing everything he can into the air on the chance that something might take flight. And we're the smallest, weakest bird.

My mother looks at me with love and understanding, and I realize: she knows what my father did. She knows what I want. She knows and even though she would not destroy a tissue sample or love someone who is not her Match, she still loves us, even though we have done those things.

It could have been different," I say, almost under my breath. If I'd kissed Indie again after she kissed me. If I hadn't known Cassia before I met Indie."But it's not," Indie says, and she's right.

I'll stand next to that fountain and wait until the Official find me. And when she does and asks me what I'm doing, I'll tell her and everyone else that I know: t hey are giving us pieces of a real life instead of the whole thing. And I'll tell her that I don't want my life to be samples and scraps. A taste of everything but a meal of nothing.

We do not kiss. We do nothing but hold on and breathe, but still I know. I cannot go gently now. Not even for the sake of my parents, my family.Not even for Xander.