01UndatedMy brain came alight with tenderness for her. I felt so sorry for everything. I yearned to embrace her, kiss her even, to stay with her, always her, my sister, my friend to the end. It was a story after all, even if a sick one. It was completely ours.Hannah Lillith Assadi / quote ↗
02UndatedI wanted to walk faster, to run, far as possible from her, from my entire life, from the first day I ever saw her always just a few steps ahead.Hannah Lillith Assadi / quote ↗
03UndatedDon't fall in love or let anyone's life become more important than your own.Hannah Lillith Assadi / quote ↗
04UndatedI am a memory house for those I have lost, those I no longer know.Hannah Lillith Assadi / quote ↗
05UndatedWe remained talking, fighting gently or viciously for what seemed like hours, but it was only minutes or perhaps a second, because it was only a dream.Hannah Lillith Assadi / quote ↗
06UndatedI meditated on my childhood, vague and distant before high school, where Laura still flickered only on the edge of things.Hannah Lillith Assadi / quote ↗
07UndatedOur past would dissolve. We would move on from each other and from the ghosts of our youth.Hannah Lillith Assadi / quote ↗
08UndatedMy loves have always been seared with this singing, this singing written by death, the way some lands have always been crippled by war.Hannah Lillith Assadi / quote ↗
09UndatedI inherited this longing. I was addicted to it. And so I was at home with those who wanted and never had enough. I was at home in the places that could never be. The places found only in dreams.Hannah Lillith Assadi / quote ↗
10UndatedNightmares always recur, but never our most beautiful dreams.Hannah Lillith Assadi / quote ↗
11UndatedI slowly lost any dream for myself. No one warned me of this, that the stars in New York can infect the light inside, that they can trap you in their shadow. Dylan was of course a star. He had achieved the thing we all came to New York wanting.Hannah Lillith Assadi / quote ↗
12UndatedWe are all cursed. We live in the era of the curse. A world that cannot be fixed. The best thing would be an alien ship. Another planet. One with three moons. But you, I saw you in my dreams. I saw you coming. You came to heal my broken heart. That's why I named you Ahlam.Hannah Lillith Assadi / quote ↗
13UndatedWhen I returned to New York, it had already changed. I always wished things could just remain.Hannah Lillith Assadi / quote ↗
14UndatedWith the years, we become even more ourselves and call this change.Hannah Lillith Assadi / quote ↗
15UndatedI first understood why Christians prayed for a savior in the form of a beautiful man. He had absolved me of the blue-streaked blond.Hannah Lillith Assadi / quote ↗
16UndatedIt was all so foolish then, as it is now, as it is forever. To be in love with beauty. To try to hold on to it.Hannah Lillith Assadi / quote ↗
18UndatedThere is the body of history ever atop of us, and the body of memory rustling within us. Between the two, we are crushed.Hannah Lillith Assadi / quote ↗
19UndatedI look out at the reservation, still and glittering with casinos, and think of all the death dried up and buried in its dirt.Hannah Lillith Assadi / quote ↗
20UndatedI faded out. I was for a moment my father tapping on his cigarette, the way he holds it, crushing it flat. I was my mother at the sink, staring into the desert from the kitchen window, dishes in hand. I was in all the beds I'd ever slept in. Me sinking into the sheets, letting my thoughts fall down. I was running alongside the ocean, Laura splashing me with water. I was dancing to a melody I did not recognize, spinning wild and lovely into exalted leaps. I was no one again. I was someone with no name, no past. My face resumed the freshness of birth, the brightness was again in my eyes, the brightness only children own before life begins its wreckage.Hannah Lillith Assadi / quote ↗
22UndatedIt was long past midnight. Laura's music played on. It was composed in the language of stars, tinkling in a crystal pool suspended from constellations. She used chimes now and then, the chimes that characterized every patio in Arizona, the piano, the trees combed by wind. A prelude to a storm. It was like discovering the secret room in a dream of your house that holds all the magic. It was music I wished I lived inside. Around us, cactus, hills filled with jumping cholla, the heat of August like another animal heaving over us.Hannah Lillith Assadi / quote ↗
23UndatedWith this man I will never want. With this man I will never be sad again.Hannah Lillith Assadi / quote ↗
24UndatedI remember wanting to flee her, and being unable to flee her, so in need of her and half hating her for it, and I still am nauseous from it.Hannah Lillith Assadi / quote ↗
