Ariel Love Quotes

Is it the sea you hear in me? Its dissatisfactions? Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness? Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it. --from "Elm", written 19 April 1962

And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.

I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps out Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

O love, how did you get here? --from "Nick and the Candlestick", written 29 October 1962

Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it --from "Elm", written 19 April 1962

Light is easy to love. Show me your darkness.

Clouds pass and disperse. Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables? Is it for such I agitate my heart?

Your heart is the size of your fist; keep loving, keep fighting.

Why Dream? Life is a difficult assignment. We are fragile creatures, expected to function at high rates of speed, and asked to accomplish great and small things each day. These daily activities take enormous amounts of energy. Most things are out of our control. We are surrounded by danger, frustration, grief, and insanity as well as love, hope, ecstasy, and wonder. Being fully human is an exercise in humility, suffering, grace, and great humor. Things and people all around us die, get broken, or are lost. There is no safety or guarantees. The way to accomplish the assignment of truly living is to engage fully, richly, and deeply in the living of your dreams. We are made to dream and to live those dreams.

I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps out Looking, with its hooks, for something to love I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

A Gift for You I send you... The gift of a letter from your wise self. This is the part of you that sees you with benevolent, loving eyes. You find this letter in a thick envelope with your name on it, and the word YES written boldly above your name. My Dear, I am writing this to remind you of your 'essence beauty.' This is the part of you that has nothing to do with age, occupation, weight, history, or pain. This is the soft, untouched, indelible you. You can love yourself in this moment, no matter what you have, or haven't done or been. See past any masks, devices, or inventions that obscure your essence. Remember your true purpose, WHICH is only Love. If you cannot see or feel love, lie down now and cry; it will cleanse your vision and free your heart. I love you; I am you.

There is nothing I love more than traveling to a place where I know nobody, and where everything will be a surprise, and then writing about it. It’s like having a new lover—even the parts you aren’t crazy about have the crackling fascination of the unfamiliar.

Say ye love me.Even if its not true, let me keep th' words. -Nate to Bertie Tell me you love me, at least as much as you love him. -Ariel to Bertie

If i can't be your true love, i want to be your worst nightmare.

Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it.

If you love something, love it completely, cherish it, say it, but most importantly, show it. Life is finite and fragile, and just because something is there one day, it might not be the next. Never take that for granted. Say what you need to say, then say a little more. Say too much. Show too much. Love too much. Everything is temporary but love. Love outlives us all.

You could make mistakes when you lived together because you knew you'd wake up the next morning with another chance.

The myriad of flavors explode on my tongue, shimmy through my mouth, slap my taste buds and call them filthy bastards, and I love it.

We are in the twilight years of a long love affair, and it has recently occurred to me that a day will come when one of us buries the other. But, I remind myself, that is the happy ending to a story like ours. It is a vow made and kept. Till death do us part. It is the only acceptable outcome to a long and happy marriage, and I am determined not to fear that day, whenever it arrives. I am equally determined to soak up all the days between.

Love is a choice. It is the active choosing of good for another person. But like? It is a gift and it cannot be forced.

I do love you. I love you enough to accept who you are. Why can’t I received the same feeling in return?” -Ariel

Whether you’re Veritas the Law Guardian, Ariel the vampire-witch, or Death’s scary demigod daughter. Doesn’t matter. In all your forms, in every manifestation of yourself, I love you.

The ALL or Nothing, You Love Me-You Hate Me-I am Everything-I am Nothing. I want to Live. I want to Die, became the Curse of her life.

The only thing better than kissing Ariel is waiting to kiss her, those moments of delicious anticipation when I know she's about to sweep through me and empty me of everything but light and desire.

The collar had restrained his winds but not killed them. They uncoiled from behind the shadows, ready to surround her, to lift her up, to carry her away with only Ariel’s silk-clad arms wrapped about her to keep her from falling. Spirare, they whispered to her like an incantation. Breathe us in. Bertie didn’t mean to, but she inhaled, and everything inside her was a spring morning, a rose opening its petals to the sun, the light coming through the wavering glass of an old, diamond-paned window. Tendrils of wind reached for Bertie with a coaxing hand. Release him, and he will love you.

In our relationship, we have very well-defined roles: I am the Vice President of Logistics; he's the CEO of Emotional Support.

Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing things historians usually record; while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks. Historians are pessimists because they ignore the banks of the river.

Cinderella walked on broken glass Anurora let a whole lifetime pass Belle fell in love with a hideous beast Jasmine married a common thief Ariel walked on land for love Snow White barely escaped a knife because Rapunzel has to find a new dream Tiana kissed her prince and turned green Mulan left to be a man Pocahontas stayed to save her land It's all about the smiles and tears; because love means facing your biggest fears

But I would be happier if my daughter and her friends were crashing through the glass ceiling instead of the sexual ceiling,' Jong continued. 'Being able to have an orgasm with a man you don't love or having Sex and the City on television, that is not liberation. If you start to think about women as if we're all Carrie on Sex and the City, well, the problem is: You're not going to elect Carrie to the Senate or to run your company. Let's see the Senate fifty percent female; let's see women in decision-making positions--that's power. Sexual freedom can be a smokescreen for how far we haven't come.

All those people who rejected me gave me a head-start on freedom, because the fear and obedience we are all taught, well, those things weren't getting me any love.

She sees the image of God in human beings, he thought, even when they are not at their best.

Seharusnya ada perayaan hari ini, bukan peluk sesaat untuk selamanya.

Don't you dare. Don't you run away from me." He holds me tight, his fingers pressing into my back. "I'm listening. You're not Ariel. Then what should I call you? I don't care. I'll love you no matter what name you want me to use.

In 2004 our forty-second president, George W. Bush, the leader of the free world, proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to forever ban gay marriage--which was already illegal. In opinion polls, about 50 percent of this country said they thought Bush had the right idea. If half this country feels so threatened by two people of the same gender being in love and having sex (and, incidentally, enjoying equal protection under the law), that they turn their attention--during wartime--to blocking rights already denied to homosexuals, then all the cardio striptease classes in the world aren't going to render us sexually liberated.

cinderella walked on broken glass aurora let a whole lifetime pass bella fell in love with a hideous beast jasmine married a common thief ariel walked on land for love snow white barely escaped a knife because love means facing your biggest fears

Ariel looked at her then, instead of the sky, instead of the horizon that surely beckoned to him. “Out of a thousand different winds, I think I can resist nine hundred and ninety-nine of them. Now she was the one unable to swallow. “And the last one?” "That one wrenches the beating heart from my chest, the blood from my veins, the marrow from my bones.” Grasping her hand, he brought it up to his face and rubbed it against his cheek. Pain radiated from his pale skin, from his eyes, from his lips when they grazed her knuckles. “You’ve two birds to do your bidding, my fair huntress, but I want you to choose me, to love me above all others, to make the pain in my soul worthwhile… or I would be free of you.

O love, O celibate. Nobody but me Walks the waist high wet. The irreplaceable Golds bleed and deepen, the mouths of Thermopylae.

There is nothing I love more than traveling to a place where I know nobody and where everything will be a surprise, and then writing about it.

Simply being yourself is a powerful act of self-love.

What is the point of having friends if they're not there to support your bad decisions?

I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps out Looking, with its hooks, for something to love. I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity. Clouds pass and disperse. Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables? Is it for such I agitate my heart?

We'll go down to the stream behind the house with a bottle of wine and none of our clothes and remind each other that--even in the midst of so much goodness--there are delightful ways to be wicked. And we'll swim and laugh and kiss, and the stars will shine, beautiful and bright, but Ariel will always shine brighter. At least for me.

I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps out Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.   I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

Paralytic It happens. Will it go on? ---- My mind a rock, No fingers to grip, no tongue, My god the iron lung That loves me, pumps My two Dust bags in and out, Will not Let me relapse While the day outside glides by like ticker tape. The night brings violets, Tapestries of eyes, Lights, The soft anonymous Talkers: 'You all right?' The starched, inaccessible breast. Dead egg, I lie Whole On a whole world I cannot touch, At the white, tight Drum of my sleeping couch Photographs visit me ---- My wife, dead and flat, in 1920 furs, Mouth full of pearls, Two girls As flat as she, who whisper 'We're your daughters.' The still waters Wrap my lips, Eyes, nose and ears, A clear Cellophane I cannot crack. On my bare back I smile, a buddha, all Wants, desire Falling from me like rings Hugging their lights. The claw Of the magnolia, Drunk on its own scents, Asks nothing of life.

Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.

There is a green in the air, Soft, delectable. It cushions me lovingly.

This is how the human heart beats, a twisted staccato of love and envy, anger and relief.

You have an affair to get for yourself what you wish would come from the person you love the most. And then you have broken her heart and she can never give you any of it ever again.

Our national love of porn and pole dancing is not the byproduct of a free and easy society with an earthy acceptance of sex. It is a desperate stab at freewheeling eroticism in a time and place characterized by intense anxiety. What are we afraid of? Everything…which includes sexual freedom and real female power.

You have an affair because you are not getting what you want from your loved one. You want more: more love, more sex, more attention, more fun. You want someone to look at you with lust - after years of laundry - transforming you into something radiant. You want it, you need it, you owe it yourself to get it. To live any other way is to be muffled and gray and marching meaninglessly toward death. You want what she gave you at the start (but what you had hoped would expand and intensify instead of shrinking until you find yourself so sad, so resentful, you can barely stand to be you). You have an affair to get for yourself what you wish would come from the person you love the most. And then you have broken her heart and she can never give you any of it ever again.

My pristine grief was intermittently marred by dread. I thought of the chilling words a friend of mine had once used to explain why his older sister had married a man she did not love when she was reaching the end of her childbearing years: She had run out of runway.

Is it the sea you hear in me, Its dissatisfactions? Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness? Love is a shadow.

Oh, i feel my eyes are swollen. It's like either sobbing all night or someone punch me in the eyes.

So tell me i'm wrong, cursed me when i'm started being a douchebag and all. Then i'll let you know how much i love you, lads.

The whole point is that everybody gets to marry the person they love.

BECAUSE HER LOVE was a vapor. It didn’t touch, it didn’t heal, it didn’t soothe.

At the happy ending of the Tempest, Prospero brings the kind back togeter with his son, and finds Miranda's true love and punishes the bad duke and frees Ariel and becomes a duke himself again. Everyone - except Caliban - is happy, and everyone is forgiven, and everyone is fine, and they all sail away on calm seas. Happy endings. That's how it is in Shakespeare. But Shakespeare was wrong. Sometimes there isn't a Prospero to make everything fine again. And sometimes the quality of mercy is strained.

If half this country feels so threatened by two people of the same gender being in love and having sex (and, incidentally, enjoying equal protection under the law), that they turn their attention—during wartime—to blocking rights already denied to homosexuals, then all the cardio striptease classes in the world aren’t going to render us sexually liberated.

But the truth is, the ten or twenty minutes I was somebody’s mother were black magic. There is no adventure I would trade them for; there is no place I would rather have seen. -Thanksgiving in Mongolia, The New Yorker, November 18, 2013 Issue

If you never find it in your heart to trust me again—if you never believe another word I say—believe that I love you. My love isn’t perfect, and it isn’t beautiful. It’s broken and scarred and ugly, but all of it is yours. I will always be yours

Nick and the Candlestick I am a miner. The light burns blue. Waxy stalactites Drip and thicken, tears The earthen womb Exudes from its dead boredom. Black bat airs Wrap me, raggy shawls, Cold homicides. They weld to me like plums. Old cave of calcium Icicles, old echoer. Even the newts are white, Those holy Joes. And the fish, the fish ---- Christ! they are panes of ice, A vice of knives, A piranha Religion, drinking Its first communion out of my live toes. The candle Gulps and recovers its small altitude, Its yellows hearten. O love, how did you get here? O embryo Remembering, even in sleep, Your crossed position. The blood blooms clean In you, ruby. The pain You wake to is not yours. Love, love, I have hung our cave with roses, With soft rugs ---- The last of Victoriana. Let the stars Plummet to their dark address, Let the mercuric Atoms that cripple drip Into the terrible well, You are the one Solid the spaces lean on, envious. You are the baby in the barn.

The only big weapon anyone has against you is that you’re human. Fucked-up, a bit. Imperfect, yes. In this, you are like every great human who has ever lived, male and female alike. If you’re slutty, well, Mary Wollstonecraft was pretty slutty. If you’re needy, my God, Charlotte Brontë’s needs could devour a person alive. If you’re mean, or self-destructive, or crazy, I assure you, Billie Holiday managed to record ‘Strange Fruit’ while being spectacularly self-destructive, and Sylvia Plath wrote Ariel while being both crazy and very, very mean. The world is still better with those works in it. Humanity is still lucky that those particular women existed, and that, despite their deep flaws and abudance of raw humanity, they stood up and said what they had to say.

Don't you have virgin blood to drink or something?' 'Virgin blood?' Castor smiled one of those devastating vampire smiles as he shoved a hand through his hair in very devil-may-care fashion. 'What kind of stories have you been reading about me?' 'I don't read any stories about you,' Lala huffed, but Evangeline swore there was a deeper colour on her cheeks. 'So it's just a coincidence that you're quoting one of them?' 'I know you drink blood,' she said. Castor's gaze turned heated. I'd like to drink your blood, it seemed to say.

CINDERELLA" walked on broken glass. "AURORA" Let a whole lifetime pass. "BELLE" Fell in love with a hideous beast. "JASMINE" Married a common theif. "ARIEL" Walked on land for love. "SNOW WHITE" Barely escaped a knife. Because LOVE means facing your biggest fear... <3 <3 :) :)

Goodwill shouldn't be just for men. It should also apply to women and children, and all animals, even the yucky ones like subway rats. I'd even extend the goodwill not just to living creatures but to the dearly departed, and if we include them, we might as well include the undead, those supposedly mythic beings like vampires, and if they're in, then so are elves, fairies, and gnomes. Heck, since we're already being so generous in our big group hug, why not also embrace those supposedly inanimate objects like dolls and stuffed animals (special shout-out to my Ariel mermaid, who presides over the shabby chic flower power pillow on my bed - love you, girl!). I'm sure Santa would agree. Goodwill to all.

But if you ask me to let you go? Angel, you know I can’t do that. If you’re gone, then what else do I have to live for? Hope. That’s what I have to live for. Hope that one day I might get to hear you say, “I love you too.” So I’ll wait. I’ll wait as long as it takes. Forever yours, Christian

You are my everything. Mind. Body. Soul. I fucking love you, Elena, and you will love me back. I don’t care if I have to destroy you in the process.

I’m owning my wild mane of red, she’d said when Lily tried to get her to brush and straighten it before leaving today. I’m like Ariel in The Little Mermaid.

I could easily falling in love with Ruby Sparks, wizard!

Oh, aku tidak punya rindu yang bisa kubagi untuk orang yg kucintai, tapi aku merindukan teman-temanku.

Y que no pase el tiempo acumulado / para amar unos ojos y tenerlos / y vivir de la idea y el oficio.

I don't need you love to be epic, I just need it to be unconditional.

Never listen to the haters. Work hard, and do what you love.

I'm not giving up on Jacks,' Evangeline said. Lala briefly pursed her lips. 'That's a very human thing to say. 'I can't tell if that's a compliment or an insult.' 'I think it's a bit of both.

Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts. Nor the woman in the ambulance Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly – A gift, a love gift Utterly unasked for By a sky Palely and flamily Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes Dulled to a halt under bowlers. Oh my God, what am I That these late mouths should cry open In a forest of frosts, in a dawn of cornflowers.

I eat some crisps while I think about my question. “Would you rather have your knob chopped off or your tongue?” “Bloody hell, Ariel,” he says. “Can’t you ask one normal question?” I shrug. “Answer it.” “Tongue,” he says. I laugh. “Really? You’d rather never speak a single word ever again, never tell your wife you love her, never tell your children that you think they’re beautiful, all so you could get your end away?” He nods. “I wouldn’t get a wife or a child if I didn’t have a knob.” “You’d still have balls and sperm,” I say. “You could still father a child.” He shakes his head. “I’d want my knob.

Making Waves I would do anything for you. Would you be yourself? In the Hans Christian Anderson classic, The Little Mermaid, Ariel gives up her beautiful voice in exchange for legs. This is a seemingly innocent fable that captures our deal with the modern devil. For aren't we taught that mobility is freedom, whether it be moving from state to state, or from marriage to marriage, or from adventure to adventure? Aren't we convinced that upward mobility, moving from job to job, is the definition of success? Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with change or variety or newness or with improving our condition. The catch is when we are asked to give up our voice in order to move freely, when we are asked to silence what makes us unique in order to be successful. When not making waves means giving up our chance to dive into the deep, then we are bartering our access to God for a better driveway. As a story about relationship, the lesson of Ariel is crucial. On the surface, her desire for legs seems touching and sweetly motivated by love and the want to belong. Yet here too is another false bargain that plagues everyone who ever tries it. For no matter how badly we want to love or be loved, we cannot alter our basic nature and survive inside, where it counts.

The counselor says that we are "at the beginning of a long, uphill journey." She says, "Relapse is a part of recovery." I think, You have got to be fucking kidding me. I say, "Do I look like someone who's ready for a long, uphill journey?" Lucy snickers for a second, and I love her. I lover her much more than I want to. But I am worn down and out. The thought of another trip crushes me. I tell Lucy, You are my family. But I'm not coming with you.

This fear of needing a man to make us happy is a product of our bullshit Disney princess culture that also taught us a man can fall in love even if a sea witch stole the woman's voice. She was pretty damn awesome as a mermaid first!

If Eric had just listened to his heart and not someone else's singing, none of this would have happened. He had fallen in love with the voiceless red-haired girl. He was just too stupid and obstinate to recognize it. He loved everything about her. Her smile, the way she moved, the way she took delight in everything around her. She was impulsive, unmannered, willing to get dirty, a little strange, and extremely hands-on. And beautiful. So different from all the princesses and ladies his parents had introduced him to.

What are you doing here?' Her lips twisted with displeasure. 'I just saved your friend's life.' Chaos replied sharply. And was it just Evangeline's imagination, or did he puff out his chest? ... 'Well, I'm here now, so-' Lala waved a hand toward the forest. 'Did you just dismiss me?' Castor asked. 'I tried,' Lala said.

I am Jacks's true love. I believe it with the same confidence that I believe that water fills the oceans and morning follows the night. I believe it with all my heart and soul. And there has to be some sort of magic in that.' 'I don't believe that's how magic works.' Lala looked at her sadly. 'Believing something doesn't make it true.

The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals; They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat, And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me. The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea, And comes from a country far away as health. --from "Tulips", written 18 March 1961

Of course- I loathe him. I can't stand the sight of him or the sound of his voice, and I want to get out of here before he returns so I never have to see him again.' 'Let's do that then. Although I would love to wait until he returns so that I can stab him in the heart and then cook it over a fire. But I suppose I can do that another day,' Lala mused.

Employment in the Small Bookstore" Twelve Poems, 1975 The dust is almost motionless in this narrowness, this stillness, yet how unlike a coffin it is, sometimes letting a live one in, sometimes out and the air, though paused, impends not a thing, the silence isn't sinister, and in fact not much goes on at the Ariel Book Shop today, no one weeps in the back room full of books, old books, no one is tearing the books to shreds, in fact I am merely sitting here talking to no one, no one being here, and I am blameless, More, I am grateful for the job, I am fond of the books and touch them, I am grateful that King St. goes down to the river, and that the rain is lovely, the afternoon green. If the soft falling away of the afternoon is all there is, it is nearly enough, just let me hear the beautiful clear voice of a woman in song passing toward silence, and then that will be all for me at five o'clock I will walk down to see the untended sailing yachts of the Potomac bobbing hopelessly in another silence, the small silence that gets to be a long one when the past stops talking to you because it is dead, and still you listen, hearing just the tiny agonies of old boats on a cloudy day, in cloudy water. Talk to it. Men are talking to it by Cape Charles, for them it's the same silence with fishing lines in their hands. We are all looking at the river bearing the wreckage so far away. We wonder how the river ever came to be so grey, and think that once there were some very big doings on this river, and now that is all over.

A wave formed, swelling around Ariel's body. It lifted her up higher and higher- or maybe she herself was growing: it was hard to tell. She held the trident aloft. Storm clouds raced to her from all directions like a lost school of cichlid babies flicking to their father's mouth for protection. Lightning coursed through the sky and danced between the trident's tines. Ariel sang a song of rage. Notes rose and fell discordantly, her voice screeching at times like a banshee from the far north. She sang, and the wind sang with her. It whipped her hair out of its braids and pulled tresses into tentacles that billowed around her head. She sang of the unfairness of Eric's fate and her own, of her father's torture as a polyp, even of Scuttle's mortal life, slowly but visibly slipping away. Mostly she sang about Ursula. She sang about everyone whose lives had been touched and destroyed by evil like coral being killed and bleached, like dead spots in the ocean from algae blooms, like scale rot. She sang about what she would do to anyone who threatened those she loved and protected. And then, with her final note, she made a quick thrust as if to throw the trident toward the boats in the bay, pulling it back at the last moment. A clap louder than thunder echoed across the ocean. A wave even larger than the one she rode roared up from the depths of the open sea. It smashed through and around her, leaving her hair and body white with foam. She grinned fiercely at the power of the moment. The tsunami continued on, making straight for Tirulia. But... despite her rage... underneath it all the queen was still Ariel. Her momentary urge to destroy everything came and went like a single flash of summer lightning.

MY MOTHER MADE me doubt and question my perceptions. The loving and warm persona that followed the tirades confused and destabilized me. I wanted a witness. An ally. To verify. To have proof. Someone I could turn to and say, “This happened, didn’t it?” Someone who could see the transformation I saw. “I have a right to be angry, don’t I? I don’t trust her,” I say. Only I didn’t say this. Because I was seven years old and I didn’t know yet that’s how I felt. And not trusting one’s mother is, on a cellular level, unjust. I needed to be heard and kept hoping she would hear me. As a child, it was too overwhelming to believe that she couldn’t recognize reality. My craving for her to be different was powerful. It inoculated me against the tumult. I descended deep within myself, far away to a place in the future. Where things would make sense and right was right and wrong was wrong. I was able to crawl away from my rage. But I never crawled away far enough.

Have you ever successfully stopped Jacks?' asked Castor. Lala raised her chin imperiously. 'I once stabbed him with a butter knife.' 'I remember that butter knife fiasco,' Evangeline said. 'It caused a great mess. Speaking of messes- what are we going to do about Jacks's heart?' 'I say we kidnap Aurora and torture her until she tells us where it is,' said Lala. 'I'm not letting you torture my sister,' Castor interrupted. 'Your sister is a monster!' Castor's nostrils flared. 'We are all monsters.

Said Red Molly to James that's a fine motorbike A girl could feel special on any such like Said James to Red Molly, my hat's off to you It's a Vincent Black Lightning, 1952 And I've seen you at the corners and cafes it seems Red hair and black leather, my favourite colour scheme And he pulled her on behind And down to Boxhill they did ride Said James to Red Molly, here's a ring for your right hand But I'll tell you in earnest I'm a dangerous man I've fought with the law since I was seventeen I robbed many a man to get my Vincent machine Now I'm 21 years, I might make 22 And I don't mind dying, but for the love of you And if fate should break my stride Then I'll give you my Vincent to ride Come down, come down, Red Molly, called Sergeant McRae For they've taken young James Adie for armed robbery Shotgun blast hit his chest, left nothing inside Oh, come down, Red Molly to his dying bedside When she came to the hospital, there wasn't much left He was running out of road, he was running out of breath But he smiled to see her cry And said I'll give you my Vincent to ride Says James, in my opinion, there's nothing in this world Beats a 52 Vincent and a red headed girl Now Nortons and Indians and Greeveses won't do They don't have a soul like a Vincent 52 He reached for her hand and he slipped her the keys He said I've got no further use for these I see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome Swooping down from heaven to carry me home And he gave her one last kiss and died And he gave her his Vincent to ride

that enflamed itself being here, on hands and knees. Dirty girl. She burned. She made a vow: she would never crawl for another man. [The gods love to fuck with us, Mathilde would say later; she became a wife.] “Another?” Ariel said. He dipped it, put it at the end of the hallway, twenty yards away. “Crawl,” he said. He laughed. — THE WORD wife comes from the Proto-Indo-European weip. Weip means to turn, twist, or wrap. In an alternative etymology, the word wife comes from Proto-etc., ghwibh. Ghwibh means pudenda. Or shame.

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. Is it the sea you hear in me, Its dissatisfactions? Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness? Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse. All night I shall gallop thus, impetuously, Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf, Echoing, echoing. Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons? This is rain now, this big hush. And this is the fruit of it: tin-white, like arsenic.

I’ve decided what I must do. I shall stay with you day and night, and do it cheerfully and willingly, for the sake of Baruch. I shall guide you to Lyra, if I can, and then I shall guide you both to Lord Ariel. I have lived thousands of years, and unless I am killed, I shall live many thousands of years more; but I never met a nature that made me so ardent to do good, or to be so kind, as Baruch’s did. I failed so many times, but each time his goodness was there to redeem me. Now it’s not, I shall have to try without it. Perhaps I shall fail from time to time, but I shall try all the same. -Balthamos

The parquet pressing into her palms and knees. She hated the part of her, small and hot, that enflamed itself being here, on hands and knees. Dirty girl. She burned. She made a vow: she would never crawl for another man. [The gods love to fuck with us, Mathilde would say later; she became a wife.] "Another?" Ariel said. He dipped it, put it at the end of the hallway, twenty yards away. "Crawl," he said. He laughed. The word wife comes from the Proto-Indo-European weip. Weip means to turn, twist or wrap. In an alternative etymology, the word wife comes from Proto-etc., ghwibh. Ghwibh means pudenda. Or shame.

Her whole childhood, she'd devoured stories of children with dead and missing mothers, often easier to find than stories of children whose mothers were alive and well. The absence of a mother was a promise of adventure; mothers made things too safe, too comforting. Children with mothers didn't need to look outside their homes for affirmation of their supremacy in someone's story. They didn't need to write their own protagonism. Esther remembered Cecily complaining about this when they'd watched The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, and Snow White, offended by the lack of loving birth mothers and the prevalence of monstrous stepmothers. She'd squeezed Esther tight and smeared her cheek with red kisses and said, 'This evil stepmother loves you very much.' But despite Cecily's love, which Esther had never doubted, she had already identified within herself the same motherless quality that drove Ariel to shore, Cinderella to the ball, Snow White into the forest. Her motherlessness was intrinsic to her sense of self, and her sense of self was all she had these many years alone. What would it mean if her mother was alive? Not only alive, but aware of Esther and watching out for her, passing notes through magic mirrors and protecting her from afar, her own fairy godmother. What would it mean if her mother had not died, but left her?

Do you believe in soulmates, Elena?” I think about it for a long time. Do I? Everyone wants to believe they exist. Everyone wants to believe that there’s someone out there that was always meant to love them. “I think if two people are meant to be together, then they will be. I don’t know if that makes them soulmates though. I feel like a soulmate implies some sort of…divine intervention. I think the best love stories come from the people who say that love came out of nowhere for them, not from the people who were looking for love in the first place.” I squeeze his hand in mine. “Do you believe in soulmates?” The corner of his mouth tilts into a smile. “Not until I found you.

Mermaid queens didn't often have a reason to move quickly. There were no wars to direct, no assassination attempts to evade, no crowds of clamoring admirers to avoid among the merfolk. In fact, slowness and calm were expected of royalty. So Ariel found herself thoroughly enjoying the exercise as she beat her tail against the water- even as it winded her a little. She missed dashing through shipwrecks with Flounder, fleeing sharks, trying to scoot back home before curfew. She loved the feel of her powerful muscles, the way the current cut around her when she twisted her shoulders to go faster. She hadn't been this far up in years and gulped as the pressure of the deep faded. She clicked her ears, readying them for the change of environment. Colors faded and transformed around her from the dark, heady slate of the ocean bottom to the soothing azure of the middle depths and finally lightening to the electric, magical periwinkle that heralded the burst into daylight. She hadn't planned to break through the surface triumphantly. She wouldn't give it that power. Her plan was to take it slow and rise like a whale. Casually, unperturbed, like Ooh, here I am. But somehow her tail kicked in twice as hard the last few feet, and she exploded into the warm sunlit air like she had been drowning. She gulped again and tasted the breeze- dry in her mouth; salt and pine and far-distant fires and a thousand alien scents.

Cesca sipped from her coffee cup as she peered through the windshield into the darkness. Rain was falling hard on a San Francisco she didn’t recognize from her own universe, or from her time in the other Matt’s universe. The real darkness here had nothing to do with night. This San Francisco mirrored the moral corruption and decay of the society which inhabited it. She and Ariel had been here two days, scouring streets filled with perversion and hopelessness; alleyways inhabited by the homeless and mentally ill; sex shops catering to every perversion imaginable and unimaginable; sidewalks teeming with drug addicts and male prostitutes — some dressed as women; street corners inhabited by once lovely young women prematurely aging from selling their bodies to all takers — male and female; children of both sexes, from as young as seven and eight, dressed by pimps to attract pedophiles who cruised this part of the city nightly. Many of the children would be sold on the spot, never to be seen again. Sun-faded and now graffitied wall mosaics of galvanizing yet transient political cult personalities, erected by their blinded followers centuries ago, marked this alternate world’s gradual slide into an ethical, and finally moral abyss, from which it had never crawled out. "God, I can’t believe this is San Francisco,” whispered Ariel from the seat next to Cesca. “I feel like I need to run a bar of soap over my soul.

Only last Sunday, when poor wretches were gay—within the walls playing with children among the clipped trees and the statues in the Palace Garden; walking, a score abreast, in the Elysian Fields, made more Elysian by performing dogs and wooden horses; between whiles filtering (a few) through the gloomy Cathedral of Our Lady to say a word or two at the base of a pillar within flare of a rusty little gridiron-full of gusty little tapers; without the walls encompassing Paris with dancing, love-making, wine-drinking, tobacco-smoking, tomb-visiting, billiard card and domino playing, quack-doctoring, and much murderous refuse, animate and inanimate—only last Sunday, my Lady, in the desolation of Boredom and the clutch of Giant Despair, almost hated her own maid for being in spirits. She cannot, therefore, go too fast from Paris. Weariness of soul lies before her, as it lies behind—her Ariel has put a girdle of it round the whole earth, and it cannot be unclasped—but the imperfect remedy is always to fly from the last place where it has been experienced. Fling Paris back into the distance, then, exchanging it for endless avenues and cross-avenues of wintry trees! And, when next beheld, let it be some leagues away, with the Gate of the Star a white speck glittering in the sun, and the city a mere mound in a plain—two dark square towers rising out of it, and light and shadow descending on it aslant, like the angels in Jacob's dream!

The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here. Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in. I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands. I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions. I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons. They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut. Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in. The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble, They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps, Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another, So it is impossible to tell how many there are. My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently. They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep. Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage—— My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox, My husband and child smiling out of the family photo; Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks. I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat stubbornly hanging on to my name and address. They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations. Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head. I am a nun now, I have never been so pure. I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free—— The peacefulness is so big it dazes you, And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets. It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet. The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me. Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby. Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds. They are subtle : they seem to float, though they weigh me down, Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color, A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck. Nobody watched me before, now I am watched. The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins, And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips, And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself. The vivid tulips eat my oxygen. Before they came the air was calm enough, Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss. Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise. Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine. They concentrate my attention, that was happy Playing and resting without committing itself. The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves. The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals; They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat, And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me. The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea, And comes from a country far away as health. --"Tulips", written 18 March 1961

Pure? What does it mean? The tongues of hell Are dull, dull as the triple Tongues of dull, fat Cerberus Who wheezes at the gate. Incapable Of licking clean The aguey tendon, the sin, the sin. The tinder cries. The indelible smell Of a snuffed candle! Love, love, the low smokes roll From me like Isadora’s scarves, I’m in a fright One scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel, Such yellow sullen smokes Make their own element. They will not rise, But trundle round the globe Choking the aged and the meek, The weak Hothouse baby in its crib, The ghastly orchid Hanging its hanging garden in the air, Devilish leopard! Radiation turned it white And killed it in an hour. Greasing the bodies of adulterers Like Hiroshima ash and eating in. The sin. The sin. Darling, all night I have been flickering, off, on, off, on. The sheets grow heavy as a lecher’s kiss. Three days. Three nights. Lemon water, chicken Water, water make me retch. I am too pure for you or anyone. Your body Hurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern—— My head a moon Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive. Does not my heat astound you! And my light! All by myself I am a huge camellia Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush. I think I am going up, I think I may rise—— The beads of hot metal fly, and I love, I Am a pure acetylene Virgin Attended by roses, By kisses, by cherubim, By whatever these pink things mean! Not you, nor him Nor him, nor him (My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats)—— To Paradise.