Jandy Nelson

This secret is like having hot burning coals under my bare feet all the time.

This secret is like having hot burning coals under my bare feet all the time.

whether the artist even matters after the art has been created.

claims his first breath.

That’s when he started telling me I could say no and that’s when I didn’t. Then his whole body was pressing me into the hot sand, burying me in it. I kept thinking, it’s okay, I can handle this. I can. It’s okay, okay, okay. But it wasn’t and I couldn’t.

I didn’t know you could get buried in your own silence.

And then it was over.

And then everything was

One time, she made me do this guided meditation where I had to imagine myself walking in the woods and tell her what I saw. I saw woods. But then, a house appeared, only there was no way to get in it. No doors or windows. Major heebie-jeebies. She told me the house was me. Guilt is a prison, she said. I stopped going to see her.

Noah is not a team player. Well, duh. Revolutionaries aren’t team players.

Okay,” she says. “Trees, stars, oceans. Fine.”

“And the sun, Jude.”

“Oh, all right,” she says, totally surprising me. “I’ll give you the sun.”

I held on to his arm, which was belted securely around me, feeling safe because Dad was in charge and it was his hand that pulled the sun up each morning and down at night.

With a quick flick of his wrist, he tosses the hat onto my head. And I’m soaring. I take back everything. He is a revolutionary.