Sara Lily

from 雨でも晴れでも (Come Rain Or Shine)

This book made me cry, a lot.

I saw We Are Okay by Nina LaCour in a "sapphic fiction" section (maybe "young sapphic fiction"?) highlight section at a local bookstore, one of only a few books I didn't recognize. I passed it by that day, but I kept seeing it in different places, online and in person, until I bought it at Powell's when we were in Portland, OR.

I love this book. It's delicate, subtle, describes emotions, particularly grief, loss, and a particular flavor of queer love by relating to the world through senses and everyday objects, similar to Manazuru. I find myself gravitating toward books like this. I want more fiction like this.

The love and loss it describes resonate with me: nebulous high school relationships that don't have names, and can't; how to relate to a long-lost parent, and how to reconcile that feeling of un-knowning, of growing beyond who you were with the grief you feel of having not known them for so long; how to know you are suffering, know you are making self-destructive decisions, flailing in a dark sea, because they feel like the only purchase your hand has on a life preserver; how other people want to pull you out of the sea and hold you close, be a blanket of love, a warming fire; how you can hurt those people.