Confidence, but not cockiness. Knowing who you are is confidence. Cockiness is knowing who you are and pushing it down everyone’s throat

Mila Kunis

At Straus Park, I had discovered the memory of water. Here I would come to remember not so much the beauty of the past as the beauty of remembering, realizing that just because we love to look back doesn’t mean we love the things we look back on.

Shadow Cities by Andre Aciman

Sorry about the bony elbows, sorry we
lived here, sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwell
and how I ruined everything by saying it out loud.
Especially that, but I should have known.
You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together
to make a creature that will do what I say
or love me back.

Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out by Richard Siken