BAND-AID

🌑: “You said we were your sun and moon. Who’s which?”

✨: “Well, she’s my sun. She brings the light to my life.”

🌒: “Oh, so I just revolve around you?”

✨: “No. You’re there for me even when I can’t see you.”

🌓: “…that’s… wow… …but you know what that makes you?”

✨: “Hmm?”

🌔: “The stars.”

✨: “How so?”

🌕: “You fill the void in between.”

“Was none of it real, or was it real and you still left?”

- abby

“I saw the back of someone who looked like you and my heart skipped a beat.”

LOVE, DEAR ABBY

tip: every time you write a letter to someone you hate, end it with “yours not yours, ____” just to really make your point.

“I wish I could tell you I miss you, but you aren’t that person anymore.”

- abby

“If there’s a sun in my solar system, it’s you.”

- abby

“A hero is a person or character who is admired for their courage, achievements, noble qualities, who looks fear in the eyes and doesn’t even blink.”

That is the quote I saw on the wall of my sixth grade students classroom today. I strongly disagree.

All humans have hesitated. It’s instinct. It’s vital. It’s as strong as your heart beating. It is the culmination of thousands of years of survival. Hesitation is a universal experience.

Therefore, a hero always “blinks.” That ‘blink’ is the moment that human beings realize what they are doing. That singular defining moment that changes the gravity of the situation. The exact second that the given circumstances could produce a hero if the right choices are made.

Humans program robots. Robots don’t blink. If a robot were to walk through a path of throwing knives without blinking, would it be a hero? No, of course not. But by the first definition, they technically would be. The reasoning as to why they aren’t? Because the robot faces no repercussions. The robot has no risk. The robot has no real understanding of the danger, nor have they been forced to confront the facts of what they are up against.

That's where we come to our hero blinking. In order to be a hero, you must blink. You must have a moment to see the horrors that all logic would tell to run. Because it’s in that blink that the hero confronts the danger they put themselves in, and pushes forth anyways. That is what makes a hero. To have that shackling sensation of hesitation, and where most others would turn back, they trailblaze on. They trailblaze on anyway.

So here I propose a new definition:

“A hero is a person or character who is admired for their courage, achievements, and noble qualities, who looks fear in the eyes, blinks, and despite facing the world’s darkness, chooses to continue being the world’s light.”

“i don’t know what’s worse: to have lost them, or to have never had them at all…”

“i do. it’s to know which way it was…”

- abby

she was the kind of girl who quietly looked at the people around her and missed them in this moment before it even ended.

…

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twenty-ninth 💋