Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

Bury my bones in the midnight soil, plant them shallow and water them deep, and in my place will grow a feral rose, soft red petals hiding sharp white teeth.

To the ones who hunger— for love, for time, or simply to be free

Some people keep their heart tucked so deep, they hardly know it’s there. But you, you have always worn it like a second skin. Open to the world. You feel it all. The love and pain. The joy and hope and sorrow. It will make your life harder, but it will also make it beautiful.

One can be alone without feeling lonely,” she muses. “One can feel lonely without being alone.

The hunger lives inside us all. To some it is an empty bucket. To others, a yawning pit. And yet, no matter how shallow or how deep it feels, here is a truth that will either drive you mad, or bring you peace.' He sits forward. 'There is no filling it. You will never be sated. It does not matter whether you drink a carafe or drain a city. The hunger will not ease.

Death comes, and sometimes it is kind, and often it is cruel, and very rarely it is welcome. But it comes all the same.

Careful. In nature, beauty is a warning. The pretty ones are often poisonous.

The world will try to make you small. It will tell you to be modest, and meek. But the world is wrong. You should get to feel and love and live as boldly as you want.

You are the kind of bloom that thrives in any soil.

What is the point, she thinks, of loving something you are doomed to lose? Of holding on to someone who cannot hold on to you?

But María has known, all her life, that she is not meant for common paths, for humble houses and modest men. If she must walk a woman's road then it will take her somewhere new.

And how is a miracle different from a spell? Who is to say the saint was not a witch?

Stories matter, Alice. When you live long enough, they're all you have.

and it drives her mad, the idea that the shape of her body determines the shape her life must take. That her beauty is something she is expected to pass on instead of keep.

But you cannot have what you want until you know what you want. And once you do know,” she adds, “it’s only a matter of what you’re willing to do to get it.

Never walk alone at night, they tell you, if you're a girl. And it isn't fair. Because the night is when the world is quiet. The night is when the air is clear. The night is wild and welcoming and Alice lets her head fall back, until all she sees is the sky, not black, as it should be, given the time, but a twisting tapestry of blue.

Death is a kind of freedom, after all.

And here is the awful thing about belief. It is a current, like compulsion. Hard to forge when it goes against your will, but easy enough when it carries you the way you want to go.

Why does Charlotte stay? That is like asking—why stay inside a house on fire? Easy to say when you are standing on the street, a safe distance from the flames. Harder when you are still inside, convinced you can douse the blaze before it spreads, or rushing room to room, trying to save what you love before it burns.

A name is like a dress. It might be by nature pretty or plain, but it is the person wearing it who matters most.

From that moment on she insisted she would only read romance, as if love and horror could not go hand-in-hand

Sixty minutes to an hour. Twenty-four hours to a day. These are mortal instruments, for mortal lives. But when you live forever, time is something far less constant. When you are happy, a decade rushes by. When you are sad, a minute crawls. When you are lonely and afraid, time seems to lose all meaning. Blink, and a year is gone. Blink, and it has only been a night. Only, it is not a life at all. It is a prison sentence.

She looked at her life and found it small. Saw the road that lay ahead, and there were no curves, no bends; it ran straight and narrow all the way to its end.

The highest cards have men on them.” María can see that. There are men holding clubs. Men holding swords. Men holding coins. Men holding cups. “Where are the women?” she asks, and Ysabel only laughs, as if it were a joke.

Is it life,” he counters, “if there is never death to balance it? Or is its brevity what makes it beautiful?” The words spill out in such a practiced way, she’s sure he’s made the point before.

And as she did, she told her daughter what it meant to be a wife. Gentle. Loving. Obedient. Words that made María tense. And, as if her mother could feel her stiffening, she leaned close and said, “You will learn, it is better to bend than to break.” María stared into the hearth. “Why should I be the one who bends?

More and more she thinks of cutting it off. Her hair. His hand. Depending on the day.

And there it is, that feeling the men have tried and failed to stir in her, that heady, ground-tipping mix of hope and fear, the hunger to move closer, and to shrink away.

the strange mix of pleasure and grief that came with finishing a book.

María feels no maternal urge, no envy when she sees a babe swept up into a mother’s arms. Everyone insists it is her purpose, and it drives her mad, the idea that the shape of her body determines the shape her life must take.