Before you send someone an ugly message perhaps exfoliate your skin, set some life goals and contemplate why you’ve reached this point.


When you like someone you need to make a move and tell all your feelings before it’s too late. Don’t be afraid, everyone wants to be loved anyway. So if you love or like someone just tell them. Show them. Talk to them. Don’t hold all this love inside. It’s useless, painful and a total waste of time. When you like someone tell them. You can make it. And there’s a chance that they like you back.



I want you to know, if you ever read this, there was a time when I would rather have had you by my side than any one of these words; I would rather have had you by my side than all the blue in the world.


A soul mate isn’t necessarily the person you love most. It’s the person who sincerely challenges you in the aspects of life that everyone else can’t. Soul mates fight. But god damn they love, too.



I’m having a conversation with one of my friends and I ask him, “What defines you?” and he responded with, “Nothing. A definition excludes the possibility for change.”
This is one of the best responses I’ve ever received to any of my questions.

don’t mistreat people who are sincerely kind
don’t use them for their generosity
and for fuck’s sake don’t take them for granted expecting them to always be there because they’re nice
good-natured people can be worn down so much that even they can become jaded
treat these people right

A true relationship is two unperfect people refusing to give up on each other.


Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.



Promise me you won’t do the same to the next girl who loves you,” she said. “Don’t leave her hanging like that. Love her properly, or don’t love her at all.

“But how,“ she said, “how do I make them love me?”
“Simple,” he replied.
“Make them ache.”


I knew you too well, and somehow, not well enough.


I cared a lot once,” she admitted wryly. “And it ruined me. So now I don’t care for much at all. I work in extremes like that.

She treats you the way she wishes someone would treat her. So please don’t be annoyed if she keeps asking if you’re alright. It’s just because no one ever asked her.


I hope we last. I hope we do.
But if we don’t, this is how I want you to remember me:
I want you to remember me curled up, listening to the sound of your heartbeat and tracing maps across your skin. Remember me laughing at your jokes, even the stupid ones. Remember me in hysterics for absolutely no reason and in tears because one time you made me so sad neither of us thought I’d recover. Remember me brave, that time you held my hand and I thought I was going to die; remember me scared and gentle and delicate and breakable - only for you though, only for you.
Remember me happy, and all the ridiculous ways I tried to get your attention. Remember the way I was too stubborn to talk to you and how absolutely insane it drove the both of us. Remember all the firsts and how they were so delightful we went back for seconds and thirds and fourths. Remember the songs you couldn’t stop listening to and the childish dreams you allowed yourself about the future. If it’s any consolation I allowed myself to have them too.
If it comes to it I don’t want you to remember the ending.
Remember the beginning. Remember the first time you knew.


If it mattered enough for you to hate him for it, it must have meant a lot.

 And if I leave? I won’t look back.



Before you kiss someone for the first time, just wait.
Take a second to look at them. They are so new, so unfamiliar. Right now you don’t know how they taste, how their hands will press against your skin, how they’ll breathe. You won’t see them like this again.
Look at them wanting - the apprehension in their eyes. They don’t know either. In their mind you are uncharted territory.
Isn’t that special?
Keep it. That’s how you’ll never lose them. Every so often afterwards look at them through these eyes. Don’t lose that wonder. Don’t lose the spark.

If he loved you he would care that he hurt you.
Say it again.
Say it again.
He would care.

You are not hard to love, and the right person will bring out the best in you. Stay away from people who make you feel sick, there’s a reason they make you feel that way.


Tell me it meant something,” she said.
“Or tell me it meant nothing.”
“Or tell me how tragic it is that I cannot decide which is worse.”


I hope one day someone looks at you like they’ve been waiting a long time to feel as happy as they do now. I hope they tell you cute things like how they found this cosy Italian restaurant around the corner and kiss your nose before spinning you around in the street. I hope when you ask them to go for a walk in the middle of the night they don’t complain that it’s too cold and even though you can see the condensation of your breath in the midnight air I hope you feel warm. I hope old ladies smile knowingly when you walk by, hand in hand, along the pavement and I hope you are smiling too.
When he whispers how much he loves you I hope you feel your heart beating so fast you’re scared you’ll never recover. I hope he stays and makes you feel important, like he wants every part of this and isn’t afraid to admit it. I hope he finds words that touch you where his fingers cannot and knows how to pull your hair when you’re feeling electric but hold your soul when you’re fragile like glass. And I hope you find someone who asks before they kiss you, not because they need permission but because they want to see your knees buckle and your lips part ways. I hope their hands feel right around your waist when you reply ‘yes’ and again ‘yes’, until you’re falling apart in his arms whispering ‘yes, yes, yes’ and I hope you never need to ask if he’s the one because the answer will be staring you in the face.


You could forget,“ she said, "you could forget about me, about us, about the way that we loved.
"Forget all of this, the memories that every street in this godforsaken town holds, the way that we walked down secret alleyways and felt the walls listening to our secrets.“
"This isn’t working. Not here, not now. This isn’t the right time to be making promises.
"So forget my voice, forget the stories I told you about when I was a child. Forget how I look asleep, the way I curl up against your chest. Forget the feeling of skin on skin, of pulling and pushing, closer and closer until there’s just an atom’s width between us.
"Forget my voice so when I call your name in a little while it’ll feel like the first time. We’ll try again. We will, we will. But first, before you remember, try to forget.



When she is happy, she will dance with you in the kitchen until sunrise, and her mouth will find places you never even knew existed. She will laugh like the secrets of the world are hers for the taking and no words of yours will ever feel adequate.
“Tell me you love me,” she begs. “Tell me you want to stay here forever.”
She will wrap her legs around your waist and pull you closer; close enough to forget the last girl and the girl before that.
“Okay,” you murmur. And it’ll be as much an agreement, as it is a plea for her to slow down.
But when she is happy she is not slow. Her hands will find your hands, your hair, your neck, your chest. They will graze the skin until you feel nothing but blood coursing through you like the ocean waves.
“Tell me you love me.” She repeats.
“I do,” you say and you feel like laughing. “I love you. I do.”



Loving her was the easiest thing I ever did,“ he said. “Even when it was hard it was easy. Loving her was like breathing.


I am watching her fall in love with him,“ she said, “and there is nothing I can do. I am watching them fall in love with each other, and people keep asking if I’m okay.”
“All I can think is how hopeless everything is. I want to scream, this isn’t fair, this isn’t fair. I want to tell someone that I loved him first.”


Take pictures for me, okay? Wherever you are, I want to know what the sky looks like.
I’ll take them for you too; of the streets, of the clouds; of the people who smile and frown as they walk. I’ll capture freeze frames of stray cats and pruned dogs and monkeys at the zoo. And the sunset, and the sunrise, and the rain as it falls and makes the ground shiny and wet.
Take pictures of your hands, the veins in your arms, like blue railway lines. Take me to your heart and don’t ever let me leave. Photograph that sapling tree, and the cherry blossoms that float down past your window. Show me the mess that the petals make on the pavement, like a crime scene in the park. Mother nature can be deadly too.
Some wise guy once said that a picture was worth a thousand words, and I know that you’re not much into poetry. So I’ll get started on a sonnet, and pick up metaphors and diction and syntax as I go.
And while I’m doing all that, send me a picture, okay? I’d like to see the sky, and the bakery at the end of your road. Show me everything, or anything. I want to see it all. I want to see it wherever you are.





You walk. 
You ask them to promise not to run after you. 
And no matter what, you keep going, one foot in front of the other until you are too far gone to turn back.  



We were always going to say goodbye, weren’t we?”
“Yeah. I think so.“
“I loved you though. I loved you so much.”
A pause.
“I know. I know.


In three years time, you’re standing at the crossroads when you see her. She’s got a brown leather bag hanging off one shoulder, and a pearly white ribbon around her neck. Her head bobs along to a song you can’t hear and you find yourself wondering what she sings in the shower these days - what she listens to before falling asleep. She used to joke that singing wasn’t her forte, and that music wasn’t her strength; but you loved her Sunday morning humming; her smile in your mouth, your fingers in her dress.
She opens her eyes a little wider and then smiles and gives you a wave. There isn’t much time for talking as you walk past each other and the green man begins to flash. You think her hair looks different, not the colour or the style, but the way it frames her face. She doesn’t look so girlish when she says ‘hey’ and offers you a grin.
And when she walks past, you can’t help but turn and watch. You wonder who listens to her talk about the stars at night, or who carries her home when she’s drunk. Three years ago she told you that she loved you. Today you almost say it back.