by Amalia Rinehart (Illustrator), Natalie Vargas Nedvetsky (Author)
It was the gentlest of moonrises. Pink pastels trickled toward the horizon, following the sun to sleep. Darkness came, but as a friend. She spread her arms across the sky, pining for my midnight secrets. I felt particularly lost that night, so I had a lot to share. As the minutes languished on and the hue of night grew purple, then black, I readied myself for another lonely journey through these thoughts that hurt me. My phone pinged. I heard your voice in the audio message, quivering with a type of truth I've never known, and my tender walls returned. After years of hardening, crumbling, shattering, and disappearing, you softened them. Every word is for you. Forever. Wherever you are. Woven into words, I convey my growth, passion, tenderness, heartbreak, vulnerability, pain, and healing. This poetic collection in two parts (Loving and Withering), fabricated along three years of well-lived life, paints a journey that permeates within a collective human experience.