How did I not see it? Pain is everywhere. I'm just another sorry story. All these people wearing smiles, dragging themselves around--do they all know already? Do they realize how fast the world can change?

You can't make anything if you're lost to yourself. You'll want to again, it's who you are. Wren, grieving is hard. Complex. Takes its own time.

I wish I believed him. He's looking at me like he can see where I begin.

Larkin gets it, got it, the lies we live just to tread through time.

And that's just it. This is how it is. Always. To pay attention to things. People. It's too easy to fail other people. And the good-byes. You never have the time you think. It brings tears to my eyes. I blink them away.

It's too much to be trusted with someone else's heart. I don't think it ever ends well.

I came here because it's pine-dark and the ocean is wild. The kind of quiet-noise you need when there's too much going on in your head. Like the water and the woods are doing all the feeling, and I can hang out, quiet as a headstone, in a between place. A blank I can bear.