“Anger is a valid emotion. It's only bad when it takes control and makes you do things you don't want to do.”
“Forgiveness isn’t my best thing.
Easier staying pissed. But I’m
tired of being pissed all the time.
Tired of feeling hurt by stuff that
can never be fixed because it is
an indelible part of the past.”
“Falling in love with someone is the surest highway to hurt that I know. When the door to love opens, the window to control closes.”
“Puzzle pieces don't always connect do they?”
“This is unstoppable, no holds barred. This is beautiful. Crazy. A beginning. Betrayal. Addictive. Aggressive. Alive. This is something to be afraid of.”
“Why doesn't love come with an owner's manual?”
“Clear.
Cold.
Empty.
Like how I feel
right now. Love
is strange. One
minute you’re
jungle fever.
The next
you’re
Artic
winter.”
“It's just so hard to feel good, you know?" I do know. And more than that, it's just so incredibly hard to feel. (54)”
“Love is like that. I could crush her beneath the weight of confession.”
“Innocence eroded into nightmare.
All because of very bad touch.
Love, corrupted.”
“My body
Healed quickly. But the wound
to my psyche was deep.
Wide. First aid, too little, too late,
left me hemorrhaging inside,
the blood unstaunched by psychological
bandage or love's healing magic.
Eventually it scabbed over,
a thick, ugly welt of memory.
I work to conceal it, but no matter
how hard I try, once in a while
something makes me pick at it
until the scarring bleeds.
In my arms, Ashante cries,
innocence ripped apart
by circumstance. Bloodied by
inhuman will. Time will prove
a tourniquet. But she will always
be at risk of infection. (124)”
“I've Got A Little Problem
And I'm not really sure how to fix it.
Not really sure I need to. Not really sure I could.
Life is pretty good. But once in a while, uninvited and uninitiated anger invades me.
It starts, a tiny gnaw at the back of my brain. Like a migraine except without pain. They say headaches blossom, but this isn't so much a blooming as a bleeding. Irritation bleeds into rage, seethes into fury. An ulcer, emptying hatred inside me. And I don't know why. Life is pretty good.
So, what the hell?”
“The only thing about myself I know for sure is that I don't know anything.”
“Certain of misfire, my heart threatens to stop.”
“Possibilities
...in the closet
...itching
...to break out
...but afraid of
...the fallout”
“Always before, I just said no, left it solidly there. I waver now. I want to share everything with him. Want to know what he knows, feel what he feels, share the same space he's in.”
“So You Want to Know
All about her. Who
she
really is. (Was?) Why
she swerved off the
high road. Hard
left
to nowhere,
recklessly indifferent to
me.
Hunter Seth Haskins,
her firstborn
son. I've been
chocking
that down for
nineteen years.
Why did she go
on
her mindless way,
leaving me spinning
in a whirlwind of
her dust?”
“I need to capture my sprite with trembling hands. Except I could crush her. Wonder how many small things of beauty - flowers, seashells, dragonflies - have met such a demise. Wonder how much fragile love has collapsed beneath the weight of confession.”
“...Things happened
when you were little. Things you
don't remember now, and don't want
to. But they need to escape,
need to worm their way out
of that dark place in your brain
where you keep them stashed.”
“...I think the more
she has failed at things like relationships
and parenting, the more she has cut
herself off from feeling bad about those
things. And if you don't let yourself feel
bad, sooner or later you stop feeling
good, too. You insulate yourself. Build
up layers, like stacking paper, everything
growing heavier. And when the weight
becomes too much, those layers compress.
Become hard. Sad, really, to think that
Kristina has turned herself into cardboard.”
“The portal to pain is caring too deeply about anyone.”
“Love is strange. One minute you're jungle fever. The next you're Arctic winter.”
“No matter how much things change,
others never will.”
“I might have been your zygote. Your fetus. Maybe even your off-spring. But I have never been your son. You have no idea what it means to be a real mother. You think nine months of discomfort and eight hours of labor gives you the right to call yourself 'Mom'? Well, bitch, you're delusional.”
“Aunt Cora says it's my aura. "I see them, you know. Yours is dark. Sort of like black coffee, although it fluctuates. Sometimes there are little flecks of gold. If you could make those coalesce, turn your aura more toffee than coffee, things would be different.”
“They say, when facing the onslaught of tooth and claw, a creature's heart can simply quit.”
“No, Home is somewhere else,
I don't know if it's a place
I've already been, or one
I've yet to find. But I'm pretty
sure the answer is tangled up
in Where I Came From.”
“I thank God daily for the good fortune of my birth, for I am certain I would have made a miserable peasant.”
“There was a fine line between fear that would excite and fear that would paralyze the senses.”
“In 1770, a British law was proposed to Parliament granting grounds for annulment if a bride used cosmetics prior to her wedding day.
—Marjorie Dorfman, “The History of Make-up”
“In love my temperament found a new taste for life: it found a cure for the pain, and a pain without cure.'" –Ghalib”
“I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root:
It is what you fear.
I do not fear it: I have been there.
--From the poem "Elm", written 19 April 1962”
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