[P] and death is the love of what hurts you the most

[Elena]

Some girls are full of heartache and poetry

If she were made of moments and not atoms, she would be a beautiful kaleidoscope of all the pretty things she never said, and all the times she was too afraid. If she were made of moments and not atoms, then her eyes would reflect all the waters and the sunsets she has known. She would burn like galaxies burn, all fractured light and tangled stars, and the moments instead of atoms would string together a constellation that always drew out the lines of those she loved.

She has wondered what it would be like to disappear. To melt into a sunset like a candle, to lay between the petals in floral wallpapers, to become a single star amongst a constellation. To become the background, the edges of rivers, the peripheral.

You cannot hurt if stay on the edge, she thinks.

If she were made of moments and not atoms all of this might have killed her by now.

Atoms live even if you don’t want too.
Atoms live even if your heart does not.

Atoms live even if all you are is bones.

Elena focuses on the healing, cleaning out the wound. There has always been something so comforting about these healing tasks. She breathes, listens for the sound of the woman’s breath, if it will follow.

“That is okay,” she murmurs in her breathy voice of reassurance, even the syllables of her tongue wispy and soon forgotten on the breeze that winds and wraps between them. Elena is brave, or foolish. Very brave, very foolish. To fall in love again and again. But what is she now when she has another chance and she is so, so terrified? Scared or clever? Very scared, very clever.

Elena wonders what she would have done differently if she were brave. But all she can think of when she thinks of bravery is her father. She smiles. “I would like to be brave enough to swim to the bottom of the ocean, or to fly into the stars,” she says, almost peacefully. “I would never make it,” she says, blinking a moment. “But I would love to be brave enough to try.” And she places her forehead in the crease of Seraphina’s neck before turning away. “I need to get back,” she says, blue eyes darting to her injury. “Take care of that shoulder.”

those are the kind of girls who try to save wolves

instead of running from them