“And darling, I hope your remember to kiss the ghosts goodnight. They are only older versions of you that you have had to discard and forget.”

The river takes what she wants, does what she desires, and washes over anything that stands in her way.

I had hoped one day to find someone who loves my monsters, the wolves that I feed, the demons I sing to sleep, the tiger that is my caged heart, the parts of me I do not talk about. I prayed and wished and yearned until I realized that I had already found her within me.

There are graveyards inside you made of people that made you ache, made of memories that you barely survived made of trauma and heartbreak. These graveyards need to become gardens where you plant flowers that blossom, for you to let go.

So sing a soft lullaby to the things you hate about yourself, and get to know them too.

There is something moon-soaked and dawn-flavoured about her.

These are women made of terrible tempests and savage storms and the untamed unwanted.

Fearless already runs through your blood. Now do it justice.

You become the thing that hurts you until it can hurt you no more.

I am so afraid of disappointing the people I love, I often forget that I am someone I love too. And I need kindness just as much as I believe the people I love do.

Every woman is both match and spark, a light for each other from the dark.

Our stories don’t begin and end because men we once trusted have left them.

I hope you never doubt again that even when you are in pain, that you are a miracle, that every part of you is incredible.

Everyone has forgotten that Lucifer was beautiful too and God’s favorite till he fell.

Knowledge after all is a dark art, full to the brim with liberty, a trembling, malleable power.

People are going to betray you the way Judas betrayed Jesus, the way Brutus betrayed Caesar, and you will love them anyway.

Grief makes unlikely warriors out of us all.

The ghostly winter silence had given way to the great spring murmur of awakening life.

You go from dream to dream inside me. You have passage to my last shabby corner, and there, among the debris, you’ve found life. I’m no longer sure which of all the words, images, dreams or ghosts are ‘yours’ and which are ‘mine.’ It’s past sorting out.

I pressed the dress to my nose, and found what was left of your ghost. It was then that I remembered how to cry.

We commit vanishing acts when things get too close. We flirt like lovers and love like ghosts.

I had a playlist of his name. Of songs he would send me now and then. Now every song I hear is a ghost of him. A reminder that he is here. But he is not.

One time I stayed at a haunted motel. When I checked into my room, there was a sheet on the floor, and I thought it was a ghost that had passed out, so I kicked it.

I know people who believe in ghosts but don’t believe in themselves.

He disappeared like a ghost in the night but I kept looking for him in the shadows of the moonlight.