Names?” the receptionist asked us. “Jesus,” Jamie answered. “Mary,” said Stella. “Satan,” I said as I walked past her and pushed open the door to Ira Ginsberg’s office.
Next to her, my grandfather softly droops under the grand dome above us, painted by some hideously famous artist centuries ago, as this is quite literally our ancestral home, built in the fifteen hundreds by Henry the Somethingth.
Imagine, if you will, a sharper, crueler version of Maggie Smith, and you’ll have some semblance of an idea of my grandmother. Add an unhealthy dose of botulinum toxin, and there’s your visual.
Nope,′ Jamie said without hesitation, which is how I knew he was lying. But I understood why. Sometimes lies are easier to believe.
If I believed in God I would pray, beg, anything to stop time, to live in this moment with her forever. Tonight is a perfect thing in a broken world, and she is the queen of it. Her pleasure, searing white, arrows through mine, and I would let the Earth ice over to keep the sun from rising, but after hours of her, it rises anyway, sunlight staining our sheets, our skin. After, I fall asleep with Mara in my arms.
She is your weakness as you are hers.
The villain is the hero of her own story. No one thinks they’re a bad person.
I want her to split me open, to dig her fingers in and pry open my ribs, lick my heart and my blood and my bones. Pick open my bones and suck out the marrow. I want to be devoured by her. And she wants to devour me just as badly. It’s in every look, every movement, every smile.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, how could I ever love anyone else?
Most people are like sand, the impact of their lives washed away by years. They cause no lasting damage, no lasting benefit. You are not most people. You are like fire; you will burn wherever you go. If contained, channeled, you can bring light, but you will also always cast a shadow.
If I explained everything maybe he would understand. I needed to be understood.
Time was supposed to heal all wounds, but how could it when Jude kept picking the scab?
It’s just a needle and it’s only pain. Pain is just a feeling, and feelings aren’t real.
I put on my shoes and a big, fake smile. I laughed on the outside while I screamed on the inside. My body was in the restaurant but my mind was in hell.
I’ve seen her in the middle of the night and the middle of the day, with makeup and without, with her hair done up and when it’s been unwashed for days. I’ve seen her in jeans and in silk and in nothing. I would gladly spend the rest of my life just looking at her.
If you spend your life in a house with no windows and no doors, if you’ve never seen a tree reaching for the sky, or felt grass under your feet, or heard a bird’s wings beat the air, your eyes might be open, but how much can you see?
Squawking pierced the funeral’s hushed atmosphere as hundreds of black birds flew overhead in a rush of beating wings. They settled on a cluster of leafless trees that overlooked the parking lot. Even the trees were wearing black.
When the sun peeked through the trees and I realized that I could stare at it, bask in it, worship it if I wanted to, my mouth curved into a smile. I was free.
Knowledge acquired on your own means that you are responsible for it.
Mara is unstrung, unbound, unleashed in my arms.
Para las chicas malas, y los chicos que las quieren.