Believers with nothing to believe in.
It was a warm and breezy day, too warm for Sally’s heavy clothes, so she draped her coat over her arm. The sun went through the fabric of her dress, a hot hand across flesh and bones. Sally felt as though she’d been dead and now that she was back she was particularly sensitive to the world of the living: the touch of the wind against her skin, the gnats in the air, the scent of mud and new leaves, the sweetness of blues and greens.
I fear myself more than I fear any bear,′ Emily blurted. It was the way she’d felt in her aloneness, the comfort she took in being on the mountain.
The aunts always kept their promises, and they still do. They believe that every problem has a solution, although it may not be the outcome that was originally hoped for or expected.
He had appeared beside her because she had wanted him to. She had called him to her, and was calling him still. Even when she fell asleep, she dreamed of water, as if the world were topsy-turvy and everything she cared about had been lost in the deep. She plunged through the green waves with her eyes wide open, searching for the world as she’d known it, but that world no longer existed; everything that had once been solid was liquid now, and the birds swam alongside the fish.
Perhaps that was what my mother disliked most. I resembled her. I could not help but wonder if for some women, that was the worst sin of all.
In our world of shadows, there is no black and white but a thousand different strokes of light”.
It is simply the way of the world to lose everything you have ever loved. In this, we are like everyone else.
He carried so much suffering that it radiated out in waves. Sorrow is like that: whenever a person runs, it comes after him; it leaves an endless trail of pain.
I started to feel as though I were disappearing. Perhaps I myself was figment of my own imagination, a storm cloud, a wisp of smoke, a burning ember.
Relatives can be tricky when you are undergoing treatment for a disease or are in the throes of any sort of tragedy. Some want to do too much, some too little. But some are just right. A pie left on your back porch is just right. A hug in the hallway. A book of poems sent through the mail.
We make our own fate,” Jet said, and then all at once she realized that they did. They could not control it, but they could choose how to respond to what happened.
She is surrounded by stalks of dahlias, orange and yellow and pale red, with leaves so big you could write your life story on each one. She looks like a flower in the garden, just like her mother said.
What looked empty was full, much like water in a cup. What was most important was invisible to the eye.
The children on the playground all heard her. They took off running together, as far away as possible from Antonia Owens, who might hex you if you did her wrong, and from her aunts, who might boil up garden toads and slip them into your stew, and from her mother, who was so angry and protective she might just freeze you in time, ensuring that you were forever trapped on the green grass at the age of ten or eleven.
Your sorrow will become smaller, like a star in the daylight that you can’t even see. It’s there, shining, but there is also a vast expanse of blue sky.
It was a moment made of glass, this happiness; it was the easiest thing in the world to break. Every minute was a world, every hour a universe.
After living with his art in my own chamber, I saw there was more than mere mimicry, and that art was a world unto itself, with its own symbols and language. A leaf seen in a certain light might be gray or violet as well as purple, and a latticework of twigs might easily turn red as the sky paled above the city.
Put us in a jar, she thought. Put us in eternity.
Every step I took hurt, I walked on daggers, on hot blue fire. Not holding him was like not breathing, not being quite alive. As.