“As he looked out in the pitch dark beyond, a barn owl came into the floodlight, glid silently between the barns and was gone, seeming to leave some ghost of itself, some measureless whiteness in the air.”
― Cynan Jones, quote from The Dig
“A singular moth flutters in through the wind baffles to the naked bulb above the kettle, cuspid, a drifting piece of loose ash on the white filament, paper burnt up, caught in the rising current from some fire unseen, unfelt.”
― Cynan Jones, quote from The Dig
“He thinks of her sleeping now, the rest she needs, thinks of the warmth of her body, the nest-like thing she could be to his tiredness.”
― Cynan Jones, quote from The Dig
“And then he draws the lamb in one smooth strong stroke, and slaps and rakes its wet mosslike fur to make it breathe, feels the power of its fast heartbeat in the chicken-bone cage of its ribs, still wet in his hands from the grease of birth, all these things of life, from jissom to mucus slavered between thighs to the wet sack of birth and glistening oiled newborn thing—all of these things of life awatered.”
― Cynan Jones, quote from The Dig
“It is the ability of a person to bring a reaction in us that gives us a relationship with them, and for the time they do that they have a livingness to them.”
― Cynan Jones, quote from The Dig
“I wonder if she feels from me the thing I feel about her when I touch her. Not in sex, which he understood now was a different thing from everything else. I just mean when I touch her skin before we sleep and I understand all the things beneath it. Animals can't have that. They can't build their loved ones that way and feel right through their skin. That's never worn off, whatever else. He looked a where she slept. I can't imagine living without that.”
― Cynan Jones, quote from The Dig
“What song would lull a snake into submission? "John Mayer?"
"Over my dead body."
"Could be, Tim, could be.”
― Gini Koch, quote from Touched by an Alien
“A woman who has a sense of humor possesses no refuge from the merciless truth about herself. She cannot think herself misunderstood. She cannot revel in self-pity. She cannot comfortably damn any one who differs from her.”
― L.M. Montgomery, quote from Emily Climbs
“The zoos are full and the prisons overflowing. My, my. How the world so dearly loves a cage.” She”
― Colin Higgins, quote from Harold and Maude
“I am cold, even though the heat of early summer is adequate. I am cold because I cannot find my heart.”
― Sebastian Barry, quote from A Long Long Way
“Then came Dani’s turn to read a question. “‘Who’s in charge in the bedroom?’”
Much to the group’s amusement, none of them got a match, and Sean didn’t think they would either as he held up his notepad. “‘I am, since I carry the big stick.’”
Emma read hers with a remarkably straight face. “‘Sean, because he has a magic penis.’”
“Wow. Um…so Sean and Emma have a point,” Dani said as the men nearly pissed themselves laughing.
No way in hell was he leaving that unpunished, and he winked at Emma when Kevin read the next question. “‘Where’s the kinkiest place you’ve had sex?’”
The fact that Joe and Keri had done the dirty deed on the back of his ATV led to a few questions about the logistics of that, but then it was Emma’s turn. “‘In bed, because Sean has no imagination.’”
Roger threw an embarrassed wince his way, but his cousins weren’t shy about laughing their asses off.
Sean just shrugged and held up his notepad. “In the car in the mall parking lot. Emma’s lying because she doesn’t want anybody to know being watched turns her on.”
Her jaw dropped, but she recovered quickly and gave him a sweet smile that didn’t jibe with the “you are so going to get it” look in her eyes.
Beth asked the next question. “‘Women, where does your man secretly dream of having sex?’”
Keri knew Joe wanted to have sex in the reportedly very haunted Stanley Hotel, from King’s The Shining. Dani claimed Roger wanted to do the deed on a Caribbean beach, but he said that was her fantasy and that his was to have sex in an igloo. No amount of heckling would get him to say why. And when it came to Kevin, even Sean knew he dreamed of getting laid on the pitcher’s mound at Fenway Park.
Then, God help him, it was Emma’s turn to show her answer. “‘In a Burger King bathroom.’”
The room felt silent until Dani said, “Ew. Really?”
“No, not really,” Sean growled.
“Really,” Emma said over him. “He knows that’s the only way he can slip me a whopper.”
As the room erupted in laughter, Sean knew humor was the only way they’d get through the evening with their secret intact, but he didn’t find that one very funny, himself.
It was the final answer that really did him in, though. The question: “If your sex had a motto, what would it be?”
Joe and Keri’s was, not surprisingly, Don’t wake the baby Kevin and Beth wrote, Better than chocolate cake, whatever that was supposed to mean. Dani wrote, Gets better with time, like fine wine, and Roger wrote, Like cheese, the older you get, the better it is, which led to a powwow about whether or not to give them a point. They probably would have gotten it if they weren’t tied with Keri and Joe, who took competitive to a cutthroat level.
When they all looked at Sean, he groaned and turned his paper around. They’d lost any chance of winning way back, but he was already dreading what the smart-ass he wasn’t really engaged to had written down. “‘She’s the boss.’”
The look Emma gave him as she slowly turned the notepad around gave him advance warning she was about to lay down the royal flush in this little game they’d been playing.
“Size really doesn’t matter,” she said in what sounded to him like a really loud voice.
Before he could say anything—and he had no idea what was going to come out of his mouth, but he had to say something--Cat appeared at the top of the stairs.
“I hate to break up the party,” she said, “but it’s getting late, so we’re calling it a night.”
Maybe Cat was, but Sean was just getting started.”
― Shannon Stacey, quote from Yours to Keep
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