Broken Ribs Quotes

Being brokenhearted is like having broken ribs. On the outside it looks like nothing's wrong, but every breath hurts.

Caring was a thing with claws. It sank them in, and didn’t let go. Caring hurt more than a knife to the leg, more than a few broken ribs, more than anything that bled or broke and healed again. Caring didn’t break you clean. It was a bone that didn’t set, a cut that wouldn’t close.

You can die of a broken heart -- it's scientific fact -- and my heart has been breaking since that very first day we met. I can feel it now, aching deep behind my rib cage the way it does every time we're together, beating a desperate rhythm: Love me. Love me. Love me.

I was literally seeing stars, and every ragged breath I took felt like I was trying to breathe through broken glass. On the upside, my crush on Archer was totally gone. Over. Once a boy has slammed his kneecap into your rib cage, I think any romantic feeling should naturally go the way of the ghost.

As I lay there, counting my blessings and broken ribs, Elodin stepped into my field of vision. He looked down at me. "Congratulations," he said. "That was the stupidest thing I've ever seen." His expression was a mixture of awe and disbelief. "Ever.

What reconciles me to my own death more than anything else is the image of a place: a place where your bones and mine are buried, thrown, uncovered, together. They are strewn there pell-mell. One of your ribs leans against my skull. A metacarpal of my left hand lies inside your pelvis. (Against my broken ribs your breast like a flower.) The hundred bones of our feet are scattered like gravel. It is strange that this image of our proximity, concerning as it does mere phosphate of calcium, should bestow a sense of peace. Yet it does. With you I can imagine a place where to be phosphate of calcium is enough.

Next thing I remember was waking up on swampy ground and it was beginning to spit rain. I had no clue where I was, but I was hurting like hell. It was hard to take a breath; probably a broken rib or two? I felt around. My gun and knife were gone, along with my shoes and jacket with my cell phone, driver’s license, and two-thousand in cash.

What happens to people living in a society where everyone in power is lying, stealing, cheating and killing, and in our hearts we all know this, but the consequences of facing all these lies are so monstrous, we keep on hoping that maybe the corporate government administration and media are on the level with us this time. Americans remind me of survivors of domestic abuse. This is always the hope that this is the very, very, very last time one's ribs get re-broken again.

How are you?" "Perfectly fine," he said. "Are your ribs broken?" "Probably not. Cracked at most. We fought very carefully." "Did this settle anything?" "It made me feel better," he said, sitting up. "Did you see me kick him in the kidneys?" "I saw.

Can you die from a broken heart, do you know? And if I did and they cut me wide open, would I bleed loving him? When they lift my heart out of my chest cavity to weigh it, does it weigh the same as his top lip? Is his name carved into my third rib to the left? Bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. He's killing me. Loving him is killing me too, and I'm afraid because how many loves really, do you get in a lifetime? How many chances do you give it before you let it go?

Those look like broken ribs," Hunt said wryly. "Definitely broken ribs, Athalar," Bryce replied, sitting back on her heels. "And a broken arm, from the way he's cradling it." "Skull fracture's healed," Hunt observed with equal distance, as if they were on one of his favorite Vanir crime show procedurals. Ithan's eyes flashed again. "I'm sensing hostility and a good dose of male pride," Bryce said. "Throw in some stubbornness and I'd say we've got a classic case of stupidity," Hunt answered. "What the fuck is wrong with you two?" Ithan demanded.

I could protect you, if you’d only ask me to,” said Ianthe the First. A tepid trickle of sweat ran down your ribs. “I would rather have my tendons peeled from my body, one by one, and flossed to shreds over my broken bones,” you said. “I would rather be flayed alive and wrapped in salt. I would rather have my own digestive acid dripped into my eyes.” “So what I’m hearing is … maybe,” said Ianthe. “Help me out here. Don’t be coy.

Pretty warriors can’t fight for shit. You can’t know how sweet it is to breathe ’til you’ve had your ribs broken. You can’t appreciate being happy ’til someone has made you cry. And there’s no point blaming yourself for the kickings life gives you. Just think about how much it hurt, and how much you don’t want to feel that way again. And that’ll help you do what you need to do the next time to win.

She'd never broken a bone, had surgery. But the worst damage didn't leave a mark. When Hellie died, it was as if someone had cut into Alex's chest, cracked her open like balsa wood. What if it really had been like that and she'd had to walk down the street bleeding, trying to hold her ribs together, her heart and her lungs and every part of her open to the world? Instead, the thing that had broken her had left no mark, no scar for her to point to and say, This is where I ended.

The rage of the Beast Lord was a terrible thing to behold. Some people stormed, some punched things, but Curran slipped into this icy, bone-chilling calm. His face hardened into a flat mask, and his eyes turned into a molten inferno of pure gold. If you looked at it for longer than two seconds, your muscles locked, your knees shook, and you had to fight to keep from cringing. It was easier to look at the floor, but I didn’t. Besides, he wasn’t angry with me. He wasn’t even angry with Kate. He was angry with Anapa. I had no doubt that if he could’ve gotten a hold of the god at that moment, he would’ve broken him in half. “It’s only ribs,” Kate told him. “And they’re not even broken. They are fractured.” “And the hip,” Doolittle said. “And the knee.” There you go. Don’t expect mercy from a honeybadger. “How long do you need to keep her?” Curran looked to Doolittle. “She can go to her quarters, provided she doesn’t leave them,” Doolittle said. “I can’t do anything else with the magic down. She must stay down until I can patch her up.” “She will.” Curran reached for Kate. “Hey, baby. Ready?” She nodded. Curran slid his hands under her and picked her up, gently, as if she weighed nothing. “Good?” he asked. She put her arm around him. “Never better.

you could be tied to a table with eight broken ribs and a delirious fever, and you’d still find a way to make everyone else look bad.” “Hey,” I said, grinning at the compliment. “Most people make themselves look bad. I just stand to the side and don’t get in the way.

She isn't traumatized, she isn't weighed down by any obvious grief. She's just sad, all the time. An evil little creature that wouldn't have shown up on any X-rays was living in her chest, rushing through her blood and filling her head with whispers, saying she wasn't good enough, that she was weak and ugly and would never be anything but broken. You can get it into your head to do some unbelievably stupid things when you run out of tears, when you can't silence the voices no one else can hear, when you've never been in a room where you felt normal. In the end you get exhausted from always tensing the skin around your ribs, never letting your shoulders sink, brushing along walls all your life with white knuckles, always afraid that someone will notice you, because no one's supposed to do that. All Nadia knew was that she had never felt like someone who had anything in common with anyone else. She had always been entirely alone in every emotion. She sat in a classroom full of her contemporaries, looking like everything was the same as usual, but inside she was standing in a forest screaming until her heart burst. The trees grew until one day the sunlight could no longer break through the foliage, and the darkness in here became impenetrable.

I think you’ve broken one of my ribs. Was that really necessary? Next time you tackle me, be sure it’s in one of our bedchambers.

Because caring was a thing with claws. It sank them in, and didn't let go. Caring hurt more than a knife to the leg, more than a few broken ribs, more than anything that bled or broke and healed again. Caring didn't break you clean. It was a bone that didn't set, a cut that wouldn't close. It was better not to care--Lila tried not to care--but sometimes, people got in.

Had God pulled me from Adam’s rib and placed me naked in the garden, the story would be no different. Let’s not blame Eve anymore. If she hadn’t eaten the fruit, it would most certainly have been me. I would have eaten it again and again, and then I would have given you a bite.

I imagine him grown up and finished with med school, patients lying on the operating table—reaching inside people’s rib cages, fixing their broken hearts.

Promises are meant to be broken, that’s what people always say, but what if I want to keep mine? To this day, I’d sooner break my bones than go back on any of the words I said so dearly to you. We’re so young, God, we’re so young. Only sixteen with a pocketful of big dreams. The world is in our hands, that’s what people always say, but what if I’m afraid to carry it? What if I don’t want to be Atlas? You, my dear, are unshakeable. You hold your cards close to your chest. Courage finds a home in the space between your ribs. I’m too young to understand, that’s what people always say, but I am old enough to see. There’s a forest fire in your eyes that sets me alight. A bravery in your heart that beats in tune to mine. My darling, you’re something out of a story. Poetry doesn’t begin to do your soul justice. Change is inevitable, that’s what people always say, but what if that change is good? There’s a lightness to my steps there wasn’t before. There’s a brightness in my heart there wasn’t before. If you held me up to a candle, my silhouette would be covered in your name. Before you, I used to care what people always say your lovely heart led me astray in unexpected ways. Sometimes I think I’m going to burst into flames. From the spark you struck inside my chest. I wonder, how do you keep from setting yourself afire? But then comes the startling yet undeniable understanding. You are fireproof, lionheart and now I am, too.

It’s hard to say how it happens. How all of the bits of me – even the broken ones – start to tumble. I think it’s my toes that go first. Next – my legs and the hallow spaces behind my ribs. And then my arms all the way down through my wrist bones to the tips of my fingers. My lips part and I realize that this is what it feels like to fall.

This is why I run. Because caring was a thing with claws. It sank them in, and didn't let go. Caring hurt more than a knife to the leg, more than a few broken ribs, more than anything that bled or broke and healed again. Caring didn't break you clean. It was a bone that didn't set, a cut that wouldn't close.

He had been hurt doing everything he had ever done. He expected it, even wanted it. Nothing centered a man like pain. Nothing drove the irrelevant bullshit our of your mind like the taste of your own blood. Duffy always wanted to tell people who were worried about the future of their children, or about God and the order of the universe, to go out and break a rib or two. A few broken ribs threw all thoughts of children, God and the order of the universe right out the window. Nobody with broken ribs ever had free-floating anxiety, or so Duffy was convinced. It was cheaper that a psychiatrist and never so humiliating.

When it came time to die, we knew and went to deep yards where we lay down and our bones turned to brass. We were picked over. We were used to fix broken clocks, music boxes; our pelvises were fitted onto pinions, our spines soldered into cast works. Our ribs were fitted as gear teeth and tapped and clicked like tusks. This is how, finally, we were joined.

Shattered vertebrae and broken ribs heal, but they never cease crying out.

Not all scars show, not all wounds heal. Often we don't see, the pain someone feels. A broken heart is like having broken ribs. No one can see but hurts everytime you breathe.

Because caring was a thing with claws. It sank them in, and didn't let go. Caring hurt more than a knife to the leg, more than a few broken ribs, more than anything that bled or broke and healed again. Caring didn't break you clean. It was a bone that didn't set, a cut that wouldn't close.

Archer held her tighter. He banded one arm firmly around her ribs, the other he circled just below her waist, almost on her hips, his fingers splayed in a way that felt less like he wanted to restrain her and more like he just wanted to touch her--to hold her on that bridge in the dark where it was only the two of them and the rain and the feel of too many heartbeats racing between them.

Dante Russo, perfect?” Her brow arched higher. “His security team once hospitalized someone who tried to break into his house. The guy wound up in a months-long coma with broken ribs and a shattered kneecap. It’s impressive, but I wouldn’t say he’s perfect.” Only Sloane would think putting a guy in a coma was impressive.

Bruised but not broken," Dr Robinet told me before I left. I though the was talking about my spirit, but he'd been referring to my ribs.

There we stood, in the middle of the living room, hugging it out, each trying to hold back our tears until our need to cry outweighed our need to be the manly fucking men we were and we were no longer able to hold in the tears. “I’m not fucking crying,” Bear sobbed. “Me either, you fucking pussy,” I sobbed back as my old friend held me tighter and we hugged and punched each other hard on the backs until I was sure we were going to give each other bruises, and if it went on much longer, probably some broken ribs. When he finally let go of me we quickly wiped our eyes and noses on our t-shirts, because real men don’t fucking cry.

Yamane leaned over until he was right in Rory's face. "Being with me isn't sweet and romantic. I like it messy, desperate, and sometimes even a little painful." Rory digested this. He felt something unwind deep inside him. As if he were detached from it, he allowed it to uncoil slowly, building up a pressure of anger and frustration...... "My kidneys are bleeding, my ribs are broken, and I'm loaded with painkillers. If you Google messy and desperate, you'll find a picture of me.

She had two broken ribs, a broken left arm, and a broken nose; splinters from the glasses and beer bottles had gashed her back and arms. When the men had finished, they had lifted one of the boards and thrown her under the stage... They were playing a polka as the policemen pulled the girl out of the muck.

Author's Note: I wanted to read the book that would begin to answer some of my questions, because I felt I couldn't write it... I also doubted my ability to handle monsoon and slum conditions after years of lousy health. I made the decision to try in the course of an absurdly long night at home alone in Washington, D.C. Tripping over an unabridged dictionary, I found myself on the floor with a punctured lung and three broken ribs in a spreading pool of Diet Dr Pepper, unable to slither to a phone. In the hours that passed, I arrived at a certain clarity. Having proved myself ill-suited to safe cohabitation with an unabridged dictionary, I had little to lose by pursuing my interests in another quarter-- a place beyond my so-called expertise, where the risk of failure would be great but the interactions somewhat more meaningful.

No matter how brave I might try to seem, really the heart that beats within my rib cage is weak and broken and scared, and I am just a human girl kneeling before a demon king.

Two broken ribs,” he said. “You?” “Six,” Jabari replied. “Punctured lung. Some other minor fractures” “Three and a concussion,” I added. What a weird dick measuring contest to be a part of.

Ironically, the tattoo represents the opposite for me today. It reminds me that it's important to let yourself be vulnerable, to lose control and make a mistake. It reminds me that, as Whitman would say, I contain multitudes and I always will. I'm a level-one introvert who headlined Madison Square Garden—and was the first woman comic to do so. I'm the ‘overnight success’ who's worked her ass off every single waking moment for more than a decade. I used to shoplift the kind of clothing that people now request I wear to give them free publicity. I'm the SLUT or SKANK who's only had one one-night stand. I'm a ‘plus-size’ 6 on a good day, and a medium-size 10 on an even better day. I've suffered the identical indignities of slinging rib eyes for a living and hustling laughs for cash. I'm a strong, grown-ass woman who's been physically, sexually, and emotionally abused by men and women I trusted and cared about. I've broken hearts and had mine broken, too. Beautiful, ugly, funny, boring, smart or not, my vulnerability is my ultimate strength. There's nothing anyone can say about me that's more permanent, damaging, or hideous than the statement I have forever tattooed upon myself. I'm proud of this ability to laugh at myself—even if everyone can see my tears, just like they can see my dumb, senseless, whack, lame lower back tattoo.

Strange,” said Natalie. “What?” “Two gunshot wounds, pneumonia, a concussion, three broken ribs, and enough cuts and bruises to keep a football team happy for a full season.” “Jews are hard to kill.

Toward midnight he sat in the Raney Playground swings with his broken, disloyal heart continuing to pump behind his ribs. Maybe fifty feet away his daughter was in her bed, reeling, thinking it out, a thousand betrayals and loves and resentments riding the synapses between brain and heart and back again.

His lips spread in a manic grin, and he filled his helmet with so much laughter that his stomach cramped. He moved his limbs one by one to test them. He’d broken his left wrist for sure, maybe a few ribs as well, but despite that, the smile never left his face. Pain could be treated and bones healed, but all the medicine in the galaxy couldn’t fix dead. And he wasn’t dead. He couldn’t wait to tell the crew. “I’m okay,” he reported. “A little banged up, but nothing major. Kane, when this is over, I’m going to have your baby!

A HOW-TO ON DISAPPEARING No one understands the way we break. Not jagged. Not knife sliding between ribs. Not the spine, cracking. That would be too easy. That would be being able to know that you're broken. That would be X-rays showing the gaps, the fissures. Clean breaks are easier to heal. We do not break cleanly. We break without breaking. Not a crack, but a fog. We dissipate. Body here one moment and not here the next. Hands working one moment and a dead weight the next. We watch ourselves turn colourless. Watch ourselves become invisible / invincible. This way, at least the pain is our own. That's what I wanted all along, I guess.

A sea-green sky: lamps blossoming white. This is marginal land: fields of strung wire, of treadless tyres in ditches, fridges dead on their backs, and starving ponies cropping the mud. It is a landscape running with outcasts and escapees, with Afghans, Turks and Kurds: with scapegoats, scarred with bottle and burn marks, limping from the cities with broken ribs. The life forms here are rejects, or anomalies: the cats tipped from speeding cars, and the Heathrow sheep, their fleece clotted with the stench of aviation fuel.

I followed him into the kitchen but stopped abruptly. Kadyn was cooking bacon in loose fitting sweats and a ribbed tank top that fit snugly across his chest. His biceps flexed when he flipped the bacon. Holy Mary, mother of God. It should be a crime for that man to stand in front of a stove.

This is why I run. Because caring was a thing with claws. It sank them in, and didn't let go. Caring hurt more than a knife to the leg, more than a few broken ribs, more than anything that bled or broke or healed again. Caring didn't break you clean. It was a bone that wouldn't set, a cut that wouldn't close. It was better not to care—Lila tried not to care—but sometimes, people got in. Like a knife against armor, they found the cracks, slid past the guard, and you didn't know how deep they were buried until they were gone and you were bleeding on the floor. And it wasn't fair.

They heard the thud of wood on flesh. Boot on bone. On teeth. The muffled grunt when a stomach is kicked in. The muted crunch of skull on cement. The gurgle of blood on a man’s breath when his lung is torn by the jagged end of a broken rib. Blue-lipped and dinner-plate-eyed, they watched, mesmerized by something that they sensed but didn’t understand: the absence of caprice in what the policemen did. The abyss where anger should have been. The sober, steady brutality, the economy of it all. They were opening a bottle. Or shutting a tap. Cracking an egg to make an omelette.

This is why I run. Because caring was a thing with claws. It sank them in, and didn’t let go. Caring hurt more than a knife to the leg, more than a few broken ribs, more than anything that bled or broke and healed again. Caring didn’t break you clean. It was a bone that didn’t set, a cut that wouldn’t close.

Long black hair and deep clean blue eyes and skin pale white and lips blood red she's small and thin and worn and damaged. She is standing there. What are you doing here? I was taking a walk and I saw you and I followed you. What do you want. I want you to stop. I breathe hard, stare hard, tense and coiled. There is still more tree for me to destroy I want that fucking tree. She smiles and she steps towards me, toward toward toward me, and she opens he r arms and I'm breathing hard staring hard tense and coiled she puts her arms around me with one hand not he back of my head and she pulls me into her arms and she holds me and she speaks. It's okay. I breathe hard, close my eyes, let myself be held. It's okay. Her voice calms me and her arms warm me and her smell lightens me and I can feel her heart beat and my heart slows and I stop shaking an the Fury melts into her safety an she holds me and she says. Okay. Okay. Okay. Something else comes and it makes me feel weak and scared and fragile and I don't want to be hurt and this feeling is the feeling I have when I know I can be hurt and hurt deeper and more terribly than anything physical and I always fight it and control it and stop it but her voice calms me and her arms warm me and her smell lightens me and I can feel her heart beat and if she let me go right now I would fall and the need and confusion and fear and regret and horror and shame and weakness and fragility are exposed to the soft strength of her open arms and her simple word okay and I start to cry. I start to cry. I want to cry. It comes in waves. THe waves roll deep and from deep the deep within me and I hold her and she holds me tighter and i let her and I let it and I let this and I have not felt this way this vulnerability or allowed myself to feel this way this vulnerability since I was ten years old and I don't know why I haven't and I don't know why I am now and I only know that I am and that it is scary terrifying frightening worse and better than anything I've ever felt crying in her arms just crying in her ams just crying. She guides me to the ground, but she doesn't let me go. THe Gates are open and thirteen years of addiction, violence, hell and their accompaniments are manifesting themselves in dense tears and heavy sobs and a shortness of breath and a profound sense of loss. THe loss inhabits, fills and overwhelms me. It is the loss of a childhood of being a Teeenager of normalcy of happiness of love of trust anon reason of God of Family of friends of future of potential of dignity of humanity of sanity f myself of everything everything everything. I lost everything and I am lost reduced to a mass of mourning, sadness, grief, anguish and heartache. I am lost. I have lost. Everything. Everything. It's wet and Lilly cradles me like a broken Child. My face and her shoulder and her shirt and her hair are wet with my tears. I slow down and I start to breathe slowly and deeply and her hair smells clean and I open my eyes because I want to see it an it is all that I can see. It is jet black almost blue and radiant with moisture. I want to touch it and I reach with one of my hands and I run my hand from the crown along her neck and her back to the base of her rib and it is a thin perfect sheer and I let it slowly drop from the tips of my fingers and when it is gone I miss it. I do it again and again and she lets me do it and she doesn't speak she just cradles me because I am broken. I am broken. Broken. THere is noise and voices and Lilly pulls me in tighter and tighter and I know I pull her in tighter and tighter and I can feel her heart beating and I know she can feel my heart beating and they are speaking our hearts are speaking a language wordless old unknowable and true and we're pulling and holding and the noise is closer and the voices louder and Lilly whispers. You're okay. You're okay. You're okay.

Pretty warriors can't fight for shit. You can't know how sweet it is to breathe 'til you've had your ribs broken. You can't appreciate being happy 'til someone has made you cry.

One broken hind leg," he went on. "Three broken ribs, one at least of which has pierced the lungs. He has lost nearly all the blood in his body. There is a large likelihood of internal injuries. He must have been jumped upon. To say nothing of three bullet holes clear through him. One chance in a thousand is really optimistic. He hasn't a chance in ten thousand.

This is why I run. Because caring was a thing with claws. It sunk them in and didn’t let go. Caring hurt more than a knife to the leg. More than a few broken ribs. More than anything that bled or broke and healed again. Caring didn’t break you clean. It was a bone that wouldn’t set, a cut that wouldn’t close. It was better not to care... but sometimes people got in.

Taking a beating is part of being alive, … The best brawlers I’ve ever met were the ugliest, too, broken noses and missing teeth and cauliflower ears, because the best way to learn to win is by losing … You can’t know how sweet it is to breathe ‘till you’ve had your ribs broken. You can’t appreciate being happy ‘till someone’s made you cry. And there’s no point in blaming yourself for the kickings life gives you. Just think about how much it hurt, and how much you don’t want to feel that way again, and that’ll help you go what you need to do the next time to win.

Perhaps this is what life is - just being with each other. And perhaps this is also what death is, because the fossils of the amphibian and the mammal were found, curled up together: perhaps because of broken ribs and shared heat, or perhaps because of the universal need we have for each other. A flood buried the two together, alive, and although they sang unheard pleas, they were singing together.

Cnut Longsword had near killed me with his blade Ice-Spite and it was small consolation that Serpent-Breath had sliced his throat in the same heartbeat that his sword had broken a rib and pierced my lung.

He decided that, despite the swelling and purple bruises, neither my ribs nor my kneecap were broken. Fractured, maybe, but there was no way of telling without an X-ray. ‘Feel like a drive to the hospital in Milas?’ he

Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale” Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days. Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals. Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices. Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review each of your life’s ten million choices. Endure moments of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you. Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart. Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope, where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all the things you did and could have done. Remember treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes pointing again and again down, down into the black depths.

I will never understand Christians. I have seen men and women whip themselves till their backs were nothing but strips of flesh hanging from exposed ribs, watched pilgrims limp on bleeding broken feet to worship the tooth of the whale that swallowed Jonah, and seen a man hammer nails through his own feet. What god wants such nonsense? And why prefer a god who wants you to torture yourself instead of worshipping Eostre who wants you to take a girl into the woods and make babies?

Every morning, she'd clean me of my excrement, bathe me, dress me, and see that my hair was combed like a sane man's, even when it meant an elbow to the nose or a broken rib. She polished the blade. She wore my teeth marks on her body like other wives might wear jewelry. The hole didn't' matter. We paid it no attention. We shared a room. She was with me. She did all of those things and so many more, things I would never tell anyone, and she never even loved me. Now that's love.

So it’s my fault? I made you your bloody dinner. You didn’t show up. Just couldn’t pass up a chance to humiliate me, could you?” Curran bit the air as if he had fangs. “I was challenged by two bears. They broke two of my ribs and dislocated my hip. When Doolittle finally finished setting my bones, I was four hours late. I asked if you called and they said no.” He’d sunk enough gravity into that “no” to bring down a building. “If you were late, I would’ve turned the town inside out looking for you. I called you. You didn’t answer. I was so sure something happened to you I dropped everything and dragged myself to your house. I came to check on you with broken bones and you weren’t there.” “You’re lying.” Curran snarled. “I left a note on your door.

Book, when I close you life itself opens. I hear broken screams in the harbor. The copper slugs cross the sandy areas, descending to Tocopilla. It is night. Between the islands our ocean palpitates with fish. It touches the feet, the thighs, the chalky ribs of my homeland. Night touches the shoreline and rises while singing at daybreak like a guitar awakening. I feel the irresistible force of the ocean's call. I am called by the wind, and called by Rodriguez, José Antonio, I received a telegram from the "Mina" worker's union and the one I love (I won't tell you her name) waits for me in Bucalemu. Book, you haven't been able to enwrap me, you haven't covered me with typography, with celestial impressions, you haven't been able to trap my eyes between covers, I leave you so I can populate groves with the hoarse family of my song, to work burning metals or to eat grilled meat at the fireside in the mountains. I love books that are explorers, books with forest and snow, depth and sky, but I despise the book of spiders that employs thought to weave its venomous wires to trap the young and unsuspecting fly. Book, free me. I don't want to be entombed like a volume, I don't come from a tome, my poems don't eat poems, they devour passionate events, they're nurtured by the open air and fed by the earth and by men. Book, let me wander the road with dust in my low shoes and without mythology: go back to the library while I go into the streets. I've learned to take life from life, to love after a single kiss, and I didn't teach anything to anyone except what I myself lived, what I shared with other men, what I fought along with them: what I expressed from all of us in my song.

He wet a paper towel, and took my chin, lifting and wiping my face. "Derek? I'm not hurt." "You're covered in blood." "But it's not mine. Honest. It's from—" "The werewolf. I know." He picked up my hand and started cleaning it. "That's why I have to get it off." "Derek?" I leaned down, trying to see his face. "Are you okay?" He kept scrubbing. "There are two ways to become a werewolf. Either you're born or you get bitten by one. If you get saliva in your bloodstream, it's like a virus." "Blood, too?" "Dad says no, it's just saliva. But he could be wrong, and you've got cuts and scrapes and blood all over." I had a few cuts and scrapes, and I was only flecked with blood, but I kept my mouth shut and let him clean. As he did, I tried to check out how badly he was hurt. His scraped cheeks were pitted with gravel. His nose was bloodied. Broken? One eye was already darkening. Was that blood in the corner? His lip was cut and swollen. Were any teeth loose? MIssing? "Stop fidgeting, Chloe." I couldn't help it. His injuries obviously needed more attention than mine, but here was no sense saying anything until he was done. Finally, when he seemed to have scrubbed off every fleck of blood—and a few layers of skin—I said, "Okay, now on to you." "Take off your jacket and sweatshirt." "Derek, I'm clean. Trust me, I've never been this clean." "You've got blood on your cuffs." *** "Okay, now can we take care of the guy that was actually in the fight? There's a lot of blood. It seems to be mostly from your nose." "It is." "You got hit in the chest a few times. How are your ribs?" "Maybe bruised. Nothing critical." "Shirt off." He sighed, like now I was the one fussing too much

Screams died in them and floated belly up, like dead fish. Cowering on the floor, rocking between dread and disbelief, they realized that the man being beaten was Velutha. Where had he come from? What had he done? Why had the policemen brought him here? They heard the thud of wood on flesh. Boot on bone. On teeth. The muffled grunt when a stomach is kicked in The muted crunch of skull on cement. The gurgle of blood on a man's breath when his lung is torn by the jagged end of a broken rib. Blue-lipped and dinner-plate-eyed, they watched, mesmerized by something that they sensed but didn't understand: the absence of caprice in what the policemen did. The abyss where anger should have been. The sober, steady brutality, the economy of it all. They were opening a bottle. Or shutting a tap. Cracking an egg to make an omelette. The twins were too young to know that these were only history’s henchmen. Sent to square the books and collect the dues from those who broke its laws. Impelled by feelings that were primal yet paradoxically wholly impersonal. Feelings of contempt born of inchoate, unacknowledged fear — civilization’s fear of nature, men’s fear of women, power’s fear of powerlessness. Man’s subliminal urge to destroy what he could neither subdue nor deify. Men’s Needs. What Esthappen and Rahel witnessed that morning, though they didn’t know it then, was a clinical demonstration in controlled conditions (this was not war after all, or genocide) of human nature’s pursuit of ascendancy. Structure. Order Complete monopoly. It was human history, masquerading as God’s Purpose, revealing herself to an under-age audience. There was nothing accidental about what happened that morning. Nothing incidental. It was no stray mugging or personal settling of scores. This was an era imprinting itself on those who lived in it. History in live performance.

Warren,still staring at the splendid black eye and several cuts on his face, remarked, "Hate to see what the other fellow looks like," which James supposed was a compliment of sorts, since Warren had personal experience of his fists from numerous occasions himself. "Like to congratulate the other fellow myself," Nicholas said with a smirk, which got him a kick under the table from his wife. James nodded to Reggie. "Appreciate it, m'dear. My feet wouldn't reach." To which she blushed that her kick had been noticed. And Nicholas, still wincing, managed a scowl,which turned out rather comical looking, considering the two expressions didn't mix all that well. "Is Uncle Toony still among the living?" Amy asked, probably because neither James nor his brother had returned back downstairs last night. "Give me a few more days to figure that out,puss, 'cause I bloody well ain't sure just now," Anthony said as he came slowly into the room,an arm tucked to his side as if he were protecting some broken ribs. A melodramatic groan escaped as he took the seat across from his brother. James rolled his eyes hearing it. "Give over,you ass," he sneered. "Your ife ain't here to witness your theatrics." "She's not?" Anthony glanced down the table, then made a moue and sat back in his chair-minus groaning this time. However, he did complain to James, "You did break my ribs,you know." "Devil I did, though I'll admit I considered it. And by the by, the option is still open." Anthony glared at him. "We're too bloody old to be beating on each other." "Speak for yourself, old man. One is never too old for a spot of exercise." "Ah,so that's what we were doing?" Anthony shot back dryly, as he gently fingered his own black eye. "Exercising, was it?" James raised a brow. "And that's not what you do weekly at Knighton's Hall? But I understand your confusion in the matter, since you're used to doling out the damage, rather than receiving any. Tends to give one a skewed perspective. Glad to have cleared that up for you." It was at that point that Jason walked in, took one look at his two younger brothers' battered faces, and remarked, "Good God, and at this time of the year,no less? I'll see you both in my study.

No one can really explain, either before or after, what makes a teenager stop wanting to be alive. It just hurts so much at times, being human. Not understanding yourself, not liking the body you’re stuck in. Seeing your eyes in the mirror and wondering whose they are, always with the same question: “What’s wrong with me? Why do I feel like this?” She isn’t traumatized, she isn’t weighed down by any obvious grief. She’s just sad, all the time. An evil little creature that wouldn’t have shown up on any X-rays was living in her chest, rushing through her blood and filling her head with whispers, saying she wasn’t good enough, that she was weak and ugly and would never be anything but broken. You can get it into your head to do some unbelievably stupid things when you run out of tears, when you can’t silence the voices no one else can hear, when you’ve never been in a room where you felt normal. In the end you get exhausted from always tensing the skin around your ribs, never letting your shoulders sink, brushing along walls all your life with white knuckles, always afraid that someone will notice you, because no one’s supposed to do that.

She isn’t traumatized, she isn’t weighed down by any obvious grief. She’s just sad, all the time. An evil little creature that wouldn’t have shown up on any X-rays was living in her chest, rushing through her blood and filling her head with whispers, saying she wasn’t good enough, that she was weak and ugly and would never be anything but broken. You can get it into your head to do some unbelievably stupid things when you run out of tears, when you can’t silence the voices no one else can hear, when you’ve never been in a room where you felt normal. In the end you get exhausted from always tensing the skin around your ribs, never letting your shoulders sink, brushing along walls all your life with white knuckles, always afraid that someone will notice you, because no one’s supposed to do that.

By the time Dimitrov realised what had happened, it was too late. He had taken aim but Bond had already fired. Three bullets spat their ugly farewells, driving into the Russian’s chest and throat. Bond lay on the ground, sodden, his broken rib pounding. The rain beat down on him. A car drove past, spraying more water over him, but the driver noticed nothing and didn’t stop. Eventually, Bond stood up. He slipped the Walther PPK into his pocket and walked over to the dead Russian who was lying on the tarmac in a pool of rainwater and blood. He was still holding his own gun, a 9x18mm Makarov pistol, a sophisticated but ugly weapon used by the Russian army and police. He had come close to firing a second bullet. His finger was still curled around the trigger, already stiffening as his muscles began to contract. Trigger mortis.

My body records certain events; an autopsy would show that I have had a child, broken some ribs, lost my appendix. Other physical assaults have left no trace; measles, mumps, malaria, suppurations and infections, coughs and colds, upheavals of the digestive system. When I was young I carried on my knee for many years a patch of delicately puckered pink skin preserving the time Gordon pushed me down a cliff at Lyme Regis (or, he would claim, did not); I can no longer find it - the body obliterates, also.

I wouldn’t have thought she had that much to say,” Pandora agreed. “Perhaps it’s just that she’s never able to slide a word in edgewise,” West remarked blandly. A few seconds later, he was pelted with a shower of sugar lumps. “Girls,” Kathleen exclaimed indignantly. “Stop that at once! West, don’t you dare encourage them by laughing!” She sent a threatening glance at Devon, who was desperately trying to suppress his amusement. “Or you,” she said severely. “I won’t,” he promised, wincing and reflecting ruefully that whoever said laughter was the best medicine had never broken a rib.

Here am I, a little animal called a man--a bit of vitalized matter, one hundred and sixty-five pounds of meat and blood, nerve, sinew, bones, and brain,--all of it soft and tender, susceptible to hurt, fallible, and frail. I strike a light back-handed blow on the nose of an obstreperous horse, and a bone in my hand is broken. I put my head under the water for five minutes, and I am drowned. I fall twenty feet through the air, and I am smashed. I am a creature of temperature. A few degrees one way, and my fingers and ears and toes blacken and drop off. A few degrees the other way, and my skin blisters and shrivels away from the raw, quivering flesh. A few additional degrees either way, and the life and the light in me go out. A drop of poison injected into my body from a snake, and I cease to move--for ever I cease to move. A splinter of lead from a rifle enters my head, and I am wrapped around in the eternal blackness. Fallible and frail, a bit of pulsating, jelly-like life--it is all I am. About me are the great natural forces--colossal menaces, Titans of destruction, unsentimental monsters that have less concern for me than I have for the grain of sand I crush under my foot. They have no concern at all for me. They do not know me. They are unconscious, unmerciful, and unmoral. They are the cyclones and tornadoes, lightning flashes and cloud-bursts, tide-rips and tidal waves, undertows and waterspouts, great whirls and sucks and eddies, earthquakes and volcanoes, surfs that thunder on rock-ribbed coasts and seas that leap aboard the largest crafts that float, crushing humans to pulp or licking them off into the sea and to death--and these insensate monsters do not know that tiny sensitive creature, all nerves and weaknesses, whom men call Jack London, and who himself thinks he is all right and quite a superior being.

I wished Adam weren’t jumping in for his turn. Because watching Adam wakeboard was not relaxing. He wasn’t careful when wakeboarding. Or in general. He was the opposite of careful. His life was one big episode of Jackass. He would do anything on a dare, so the older boys dared him a lot. My role in this game was to run and tell their mom. If I’d been able to run faster when we were kids, I might have saved Adam from a broken arm, several cracked ribs, and a couple of snake bites. Knowing this, it might not make a lot of sense that Mr. Vader let us wakeboard for the marina. But we’d come to wakeboarding only gradually. When we first started out, it was more like, Look at the very young children on water skis! How adorable. One time the local newspaper ran a photo of me and Adam waterskiing double, each of us holding up an American flag. It’s okay for you to gag now. I can take it. But Mr. Vader was no fool. He understood things changed. After the second time Adam broke his collarbone, Mr. Vader put us under strict orders not to get hurt, because it was bad for business. Customers might not be so eager to buy a wakeboard and all the equipment if they witnessed our watery death. To enforce this rule, the punishment for bleeding in the boat was that we had to clean the boat. Adam cleaned the boat a lot last summer.

But even a vessel pulsates, beats and pumps in ecstasy and in rage! I wonder are the way we are because we are trying to protect ourselves from the “monsters” not realizing this fear that we are harboring inside us is turning us into goblins and ghouls ourselves? Not even a heart caged inside of ribs can be protected. Who can really be to blame for your broken heart? In-turn we find our own vices , our own ways to cope, ways that we petrify our bodies our lives in such a fashion so we can stop and notice the stars sparkling in the sky everything and everyone that embodies love YOUR LOVE… and every spec dancing in our own light, specs we failed to see because of our own faults.

His booted feet pounded out an insane, frantic rhythm underneath him as he raced into the cavern across from Baba Yaga’s den at a dead sprint. Pieces of dragon dung flew off him and hit the ground behind him in miniature chunks. He didn’t dare look behind him to see if the dragon had risen from the ground yet, but the deafening hiss that assaulted his ears meant she’d woken up. Icy claws of fear squeezed his heart with every breath as he ran, relying on the night vision goggles, the glimpse he’d gotten of the map, and his own instincts to figure out where to go. Jack raced around one corner too sharply and slipped on a piece of dung, crashing hard on his right side. He gasped as it knocked the wind out of him and gritted his teeth, his mind screaming at him to get up and run, run, run. He pushed onto his knees, nursing what felt like bruised ribs and a sprained wrist, and then paled as an unmistakable sensation traveled up the arm he’d used to push himself up. Impact tremors. Boom. Boom. Boom, boom, boom. Baba Yaga was coming. Baba Yaga was hunting him. Jack forced himself up onto his feet again, stumbling backwards and fumbling for the tracker. He got it switched on to see an ominous blob approaching from the right. He’d gotten a good lead on her—maybe a few hundred yards—but he had no way of knowing if he’d eventually run into a dead end. He couldn’t hide down here forever. He needed to get topside to join the others so they could take her down. Jack blocked out the rising crescendo of Baba Yaga’s hissing and pictured the map again. A mile up to the right had a man-made exit that spilled back up to the forest. The only problem was that it was a long passage. If Baba Yaga followed, there was a good chance she could catch up and roast him like a marshmallow. He could try to lose her in the twists and turns of the cave system, but there was a good chance he’d get lost, and Baba Yaga’s superior senses meant it would only be a matter of time before she found him. It came back to the most basic survival tactics: run or hide. Jack switched off the tracker and stuck it in his pocket, his voice ragged and shaking, but solid. “You aren’t about to die in this forest, Jackson. Move your ass.” He barreled forward into the passageway to the right in the wake of Baba Yaga’s ominous, bubbling warning, barely suppressing a groan as a spike of pain lanced through his chest from his bruised ribs. The adrenaline would only hold for so long. He could make it about halfway there before it ran out. Cold sweat plastered the mask to his face and ran down into his eyes. The tunnel stretched onward forever before him. No sunlight in sight. Had he been wrong? Jack ripped off the hood and cold air slapped his face, making his eyes water. He held his hands out to make sure he wouldn’t bounce off one of the cavern walls and squinted up ahead as he turned the corner into the straightaway. There, faintly, he could see the pale glow of the exit. Gasping for air, he collapsed against one wall and tried to catch his breath before the final marathon. He had to have put some amount of distance between himself and the dragon by now. “Who knows?” Jack panted. “Maybe she got annoyed and turned around.” An earth-shattering roar rocked the very walls of the cavern. Jack paled. Boom, boom, boom, boom! Boom, boom, boom, boomboomboomboom— Mother of God. The dragon had broken into a run. Jack shoved himself away from the wall, lowered his head, and ran as fast as his legs would carry him.

The night spent in the detention barracks will always be one of Schweik's fondest memories. Next door to Number 16 was a cell for solitary confinement, a murky den from which issued, during that night, the wailing of a soldier who was locked up in it and whose ribs were being systematically broken for some disciplinary offence. When the wailing stopped, there could be heard in Number 16 the crunching noise made by the fleas as they were caught between the fingers of the prisoners. Above the door in an aperture in the wall an oil lamp, provided with wire netting to protect it, gave a faint light and much smoke. The smell of the oil blended with the natural effluvia of unwashed bodies and with the stench from the bucket.

Before I can think to doubt her for whatever reason she hurries to charge my lowly spirit with her succulent lips. Reaching for her waist my hands feel for her flesh beyond her grey ribbed sweater. More to me than the beauty of the earth it is even her name that causes me to tremble when I am close to her. The propinquity of her lissome figure arched against my body is now soup to my broken heart. Her kiss and her touch allowing love and blood to again souse the channels hastening through my vascular body. My arms hold on to her like I can never let her go. Warming her nose against my face she again offers me those lips in that sure way of which I am familiar. Knowing now just as I always have that there can be no love worthy or memorable enough to ever take her place.

About a month later, we left for our final training exercise, maneuvers on the planet Charon. Though nearing perihelion, it was still more than twice as far from the sun as Pluto. The troopship was a converted “cattlewagon” made to carry two hundred colonists and assorted bushes and beasts. Don’t think it was roomy, though, just because there were half that many of us. Most of the excess space was taken up with extra reaction mass and ordnance. The whole trip took three weeks, accelerating at two gees halfway, decelerating the other half. Our top speed, as we roared by the orbit of Pluto, was around one-twentieth of the speed of light—not quite enough for relativity to rear its complicated head. Three weeks of carrying around twice as much weight as normal…it’s no picnic. We did some cautious exercises three times a day and remained horizontal as much as possible. Still, we got several broken bones and serious dislocations. The men had to wear special supporters to keep from littering the floor with loose organs. It was almost impossible to sleep; nightmares of choking and being crushed, rolling over periodically to prevent blood pooling and bedsores. One girl got so fatigued that she almost slept through the experience of having a rib push out into the open air. I’d been in space several times before, so when we finally stopped decelerating and went into free fall, it was nothing but relief. But some people had never been out, except for our training on the moon, and succumbed to the sudden vertigo and disorientation. The rest of us cleaned up after them, floating through the quarters with

No way!” She doubled over and clenched her stomach as she laughed. “She has totally turned you into pussies!” My eyes narrowed which she caught just as I lunged. I flipped her over and flattened her on the mattress before bringing my fingers to her ribs and tickling her. “Wait,” she gasped and screamed. “I couldn’t quite hear you before. I’m a what?” “A pussy,” she blurted and wiggled to get away. “I see you think you’re too tough. I’ll have to show no mercy.” “No mercy! No mercy!” she mocked and screeched. “As you wish.” Her t-shirt had risen to reveal her lace panties. My mouth salivated when I lowered my face and kissed her through the material. Her breath caught and back bowed as I kissed her again, using my lips and tongue to coax her arousal to a fever pitch. “Mercy, please! Mercy!” she begged

You, my dear, do not know how to have fun." "I do, too!" "You do not. You are as bad as Lucien. And do you know something? I think it's time someone showed you how to have fun. Namely, me. You can worry all you like about our situation tomorrow, but tonight ... tonight I'm going to make you laugh so hard that you'll forget all about how afraid of me you are." "I am not afraid of you!" "You are." And with that, he pushed his chair back, stalked around the table, and in a single easy movement, swept her right out of her chair and into his arms. "Gareth!  Put me down!" He only laughed, easily carrying her toward the bed. "Gareth, I am a grown woman!" "You are a grown woman who behaves in a manner far too old for her years," he countered, still striding toward the bed. "As the wife of a Den member, that just will not do." "Gareth, I don't want — I mean, I'm not ready for that!" "That? Who said anything about that?"  He tossed her lightly onto the bed. "Oh, no, my dear Juliet. I'm not going to do that —" She tried to scoot away. "Then what are you going to do?" "Why, I'm going to wipe that sadness out of your eyes if only for tonight. I'm going to make you forget your troubles, forget your fears, forget everything but me. And you know how I'm going to do that, O dearest wife?"  He grabbed a fistful of her petticoats as she tried to escape. "I'm going to tickle you until you giggle ... until you laugh ... until you're hooting so loudly that all of London hears you!" He fell upon the bed like a swooping hawk, and Juliet let out a helpless shriek as his fingers found her ribs and began tickling her madly. "Stop!  We just ate!  You'll make me sick!" "What's this? Your husband makes you sick?" "No, it's just that — aaaoooooo!" He tickled her harder. She flailed and giggled and cried out, embarrassed about each loud shriek but helpless to prevent them. He was laughing as hard as she. Catching one thrashing leg, he unlaced her boot and deftly removed it. She yelped as his fingers found the sensitive instep, and she kicked out reflexively. He neatly ducked just in time to avoid having his nose broken, catching her by the ankle and tickling her toes, her soles, her arch through her stockings. "Stop, Gareth!"  She was laughing so hard, tears were streaming from her eyes. "Stop it, damn it!" Thank goodness Charlotte, worn out by her earlier tantrum, was such a sound sleeper! The tickling continued. Juliet kicked and fought, her struggles tossing the heavy, ruffled petticoats and skirts of her lovely blue gown halfway up her thigh to reveal a long, slender calf sheathed in silk. She saw his gaze taking it all in, even as he made a grab for her other foot. "No!  Gareth, I shall lose my supper if you keep this up, I swear it I will — oooahhhhh!" He seized her other ankle, yanked off the remaining boot, and began torturing that foot as well, until Juliet was writhing and shrieking on the bed in a fit of laughter. The tears streamed down her cheeks, and her stomach ached with the force of her mirth. And when, at last, he let up and she lay exhausted across the bed in a twisted tangle of skirts, petticoats, and chemise, her chest heaving and her hair in a hopeless tumbled-down flood of silken mahogany beneath her head, she looked up to see him grinning down at her, his own hair hanging over his brow in tousled, seductive disarray.

So, what's the story?" "No story. Just a nightmare.” “Meaning?” “Meaning, heavy compression lines in his cartilage, severe bruising on his kidneys, liver and lower intestines. Fracture marks on his collar bone, tibia, radius, humerus, scapular, femur and every single one of his ribs have been broken. Don't even get me started on the concussive damage to his skull and brain tissue. Twenty-three percent of this boys body is scared for life. And yet, every organ is functioning normally and his neurological activity is above average. He's eighteen years old and he weights about two bills but remove the scar tissue and he'd weigh about a buck-ten. All in all, I say he lived inside a hydraulic car press, went through the Napoleonic wars and was on board the Hindenburg when it went down in flame and yet he's okay...this boy just refuses to die.

So much of the most important personal news I'd received in the last several years had come to me by smartphone while I was abroad in the city that I could plot on a map, could represent spatially the events, such as they were, of my early thirties. Place a thumbtack on the wall or drop a flag on Google Maps at Lincoln Center, where, beside the fountain, I took a call from Jon informing me that, for whatever complex of reasons, a friend had shot himself; mark the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, where I read the message ("Apologies for the mass e-mail...") a close cousin sent out describing the dire condition of her newborn; waiting in line at the post office on Atlantic, the adhan issuing from the adjacent mosque, I received your wedding announcement and was shocked to be shocked, crushed, and started a frightening multi week descent, worse for being so embarrassingly cliched; while in the bathroom at the SoHo Crate and Barrel--the finest semipublic restroom in lower Manhattan--I learned I'd been awarded a grant that would take me overseas for a summer, and so came to associate the corner of Broadway and Houston with all that transpired in Morocco; at Zucotti Park I heard my then-girlfriend was not--as she'd been convinced--pregnant; while buying discounted dress socks at the Century 21 department store across from Ground Zero, I was informed by text that a friend in Oakland had been hospitalized after the police had broken his ribs. And so on: each of these experiences of reception remained, as it were, in situ, so that whenever I returned to a zone where significant news had been received, I discovered that the news and an echo of its attendant affect still awaited me like a curtain of beads.

Little Sleep's-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight 1 You scream, waking from a nightmare. When I sleepwalk into your room, and pick you up, and hold you up in the moonlight, you cling to me hard, as if clinging could save us. I think you think I will never die, I think I exude to you the permanence of smoke or stars, even as my broken arms heal themselves around you. 2 I have heard you tell the sun, don't go down, I have stood by as you told the flower, don't grow old, don't die. Little Maud, I would blow the flame out of your silver cup, I would suck the rot from your fingernail, I would brush your sprouting hair of the dying light, I would scrape the rust off your ivory bones, I would help death escape through the little ribs of your body, I would alchemize the ashes of your cradle back into wood, I would let nothing of you go, ever, until washerwomen feel the clothes fall asleep in their hands, and hens scratch their spell across hatchet blades, and rats walk away from the culture of the plague, and iron twists weapons toward truth north, and grease refuse to slide in the machinery of progress, and men feel as free on earth as fleas on the bodies of men, and the widow still whispers to the presence no longer beside her in the dark. And yet perhaps this is the reason you cry, this the nightmare you wake screaming from: being forever in the pre-trembling of a house that falls. 3 In a restaurant once, everyone quietly eating, you clambered up on my lap: to all the mouthfuls rising toward all the mouths, at the top of your voice you cried your one word, caca! caca! caca! and each spoonful stopped, a moment, in midair, in its withering steam. Yes, you cling because I, like you, only sooner than you, will go down the path of vanished alphabets, the roadlessness to the other side of the darkness, your arms like the shoes left behind, like the adjectives in the halting speech of old folk, which once could call up the lost nouns. 4 And you yourself, some impossible Tuesday in the year Two Thousand and Nine, will walk out among the black stones of the field, in the rain, and the stones saying over their one word, ci-gît, ci-gît, ci-gît, and the raindrops hitting you on the fontanel over and over, and you standing there unable to let them in. 5 If one day it happens you find yourself with someone you love in a café at one end of the Pont Mirabeau, at the zinc bar where wine takes the shapes of upward opening glasses, and if you commit then, as we did, the error of thinking, one day all this will only be memory, learn to reach deeper into the sorrows to come—to touch the almost imaginary bones under the face, to hear under the laughter the wind crying across the black stones. Kiss the mouth that tells you, here, here is the world. This mouth. This laughter. These temple bones. The still undanced cadence of vanishing. 6 In the light the moon sends back, I can see in your eyes the hand that waved once in my father's eyes, a tiny kite wobbling far up in the twilight of his last look: and the angel of all mortal things lets go the string. 7 Back you go, into your crib. The last blackbird lights up his gold wings: farewell. Your eyes close inside your head, in sleep. Already in your dreams the hours begin to sing. Little sleep's-head sprouting hair in the moonlight, when I come back we will go out together, we will walk out together among the ten thousand things, each scratched in time with such knowledge, the wages of dying is love.

So,” Cole says. “Did you decide on a name yet?” Before I can answer, everyone starts speaking at once. “You should name him Jace after your favorite brother.” Cole shoots Jace a dirty look. “You should name him Cole after your good-looking brother.” Dylan gives me a rueful grin. “Dylan is a great boy’s name, too. Just saying.” Sawyer nudges her in the ribs. “So is Sawyer.” Oakley and I exchange a humorous glance. “Okay,” Oakley declares, rubbing his hands together. “The bidding starts at fifty dollars.” After pulling out his wallet, Jace slaps some money on the tray table. “I got a hundred for Jace, right here.” Cole shoves some bills into Oakley’s hands. “I got two hundred for Cole.” Wayne reaches inside his pocket. “Do you take credit?” “Sorry, Pops. Cash only.” Fanning the money in his hand, Oakley looks around the room. “Any more takers?” Dylan pulls some money out of her bra. “Yup. Four hundred for Dylan.” “Well, I didn’t bring my checkbook with me.” Smiling smugly, Sawyer pats her stomach. “But we are having a girl and a boy. Perhaps we can work out an exchange.” Jace glowers. “That’s not fair.” “It’s called bartering, bro.” Reaching over, Cole high-fives his wife. “And that right there is just one reason I love you so much, Bible Thumper. You’re so fucking smart.” Oakley’s shoveling the money into his wallet when a nurse waltzes in. “Hi, Bianca. I’m the lactation nurse. Do you think you’re ready to try breastfeeding yet?” Jace makes a face. “And that’s my cue to leave.” Cole shakes his head. “Not me. I’m not leaving until I know my nephew’s name is Cole.” I’m shifting to get into a more comfortable position when I notice the blue, green, orange, and purple butterflies scattered across the nurse’s scrubs. My chest swells and I look over at Oakley who’s smiling. There’s only one name that feels right. “Liam,” we whisper at the same time.

Fiske tried to unbuckle his armor vest, wincing at it with his arm half lifted over the fire. “Here.” I reached for him. He turned, giving me his side, and I took his wrist and set his forearm up onto my shoulder to hold it up. I pulled at the clasps gently, prying the side of the armor vest open and ducking down to lift up his tunic at the side, over his ribs. He pulled in tight breaths as it came into view - a wide spread of dark blood beneath the skin. I lifted my hand to feel the bones with my fingertips and his head tilted back, his eyes pinching closed. I’d spent a month nursing an injury just like this in Aurvanger. “They’re broken.” He laughed, surprising me. “I know.” I straightened, looking up at him. I hadn’t really seen him smile before. The side of his face pulled, revealing a dimple at the corner of his mouth, and I looked away, feeling my cheeks flush. I set his arm back down, unclasping the other side of the vest and helping him work it off with my eyes on the ground.

They sat together at a table in the corner of a basement speakeasy, and they drank beer, and Mike related his favorite tale of how he had fallen five stories when a scaffolding gave way under him, how he had broken three ribs but lived to tell it, and Roark spoke of his days in the building trades. Mike did have a real name, which was Sean Xavier Donnigan, but everyone had forgotten it long ago; he owned a set of tools and an ancient Ford, and existed for the sole purpose of traveling around the country from one big construction job to another. People meant very little to Mike, but their performance a great deal. He worshipped expertness of any kind. He loved his work passionately and had no tolerance for anything save for other single-track devotions. He was a master in his own field and he felt no sympathy except for mastery. His view of the world was simple: there were the able and there were the incompetent; he was not concerned with the latter. He loved buildings. He despised, however, all architects.

Hunter filled the opening in the privacy curtains. He wore green scrubs like the doctors and nurses who had scraped me off the pavement. For a split second I mistook him for an adorable doctor who looked a lot like Hunter. I knew it was Hunter when he gaped at me with a mixture of outrage and horror, his face pale, and demanded, “What did you do?” “Crossed the street,” I said. “Badly.” Wincing, I eased up from the gurney, putting my weight on my hand and my good hip. Only a few minutes had passed since they had brought me in, ascertained I wasn’t dying, and dumped me here. I still felt very shaky from the shock of being hit. But I didn’t want to face Hunter lying down. In two steps he bent over me and wrapped his arms around me. He was careful not to press on my hospital gown low against my back where the road rash was, but his touch on my shoulders radiated pain to the raw parts. I winced again. “Oh, God. I’m sorry.” He let me go but hovered over me, placing his big hands on my shoulder blades. He was so close that the air felt hot between us. “What did you hurt?” “This is just where I skidded across the road.” I gestured behind my back and then flinched at the sting in my skin as I moved my arm. “How far down does it go?” My back felt cold as he lifted on flap of my paper gown and looked. I kept my head down, my red cheeks hidden. He was peering at my back where my skin was missing. What could be sexier? Even if the circumstances had been happier, I was wearing no makeup and I was sure my hair was matted from my scarf. There was no reason for my blood to heat as if we were on a date instead of a gurney. But my body did not listen to logic when it came to Hunter. He was no examining my wound. He was captivated by the sight of my lovely and unblemished bottom. I was a novelist. I could dream, couldn’t I? Lightly I asked, “Are you asking whether I have gravel embedded in my ass? By the grace of God, no.” Hunter let my gown go and stood up “The doc said the car hit your hip,” he insisted. “Is it broken?” I rolled on my side to face him. “It really hurts,” I said. “If it were broken, I think it would hurt worse.” He nodded. “When I broke my ribs, I couldn’t breathe.” “That’s because your ribs punctured your lung.” He pointed at me. “True.” Then he cocked his head to one side, blond hair falling into his eyes. “I’m surprised you remember that.

And you,' she hissed at me. 'You,' Her teeth gleamed- turning sharp. 'I'm going to kill you.' Someone cried out, but I couldn't move, couldn't even try to get out of the way as something far more violent than lightning struck me, and I crashed to the floor. 'I'm going to make you pay for your insolence,' Amarantha snarled, and a scream ravaged my throat as pain like nothing I had know erupted through me. My very bones were shattering as my body rose and then slammed onto the hard floor, and I was crushed beneath another wave of torturous agony. 'Admit you don't really love him, and I'll spare you,' Amarantha breathed, and through my fractured vision, I saw her prowl toward me. 'Admit what a cowardly, lying, inconstant bit of human garbage you are.' I wouldn't- I wouldn't say that even if she splattered me across the ground. But I was being ripped apart from the inside out, and I thrashed, unable to out-scream the pain. 'Feyre!' someone roared. No, not someone- Rhysand. But Amarantha still neared. 'You think you're worthy of him? A High Lord? You think you deserve anything at all, human?' My back arched, and my ribs cracked, one by one. Rhysand yelled my name again- yelled it as though he cared. I blacked out, but she brought me back, ensuring that I felt everything, ensuring that I screamed every time a bone broke.

Come on, show me what you got” Shelby said throwing a set of gear to wing before pulling on a pair of gloves herself “I'll try not to hurt you too badly” “how reassuring” Wing said pulling on his gloves he had been giving Shelby hand-to-hand combat training for some time back at H.I.V.E And what she lacked in technique she made up for in speed and cunning. “Bring it” Shelby said with a grin raising both gloves in a defensive stance and beckoning him towards her “It will be brought” Wing replied. He feinted to her left and she went to block as he simultaneously swung a low blow into her other side, carefully pulling his punch so that he just tapped her. “Two perhaps three broken ribs” Wing said matter of factly “maintain your guard” Shelby nodded and took a quick jab at his jaw which wing blocked effortlessly “Try not to look where you are striking you betray your intentions” They went on like that for a couple more minutes just as in their previous sparring sessions Wing noticed that once they began Shelby became totally focused. There were none of this smart comments or sarcasm that she'd normally used - she was suddenly deadly serious. “Broken job possible unconsciousness” Wing said calmly as he struck her passed her guard stopping his fist millimetres from her chin. “Oh my God” Shelby gasped suddenly, staring in shock at something over wings shoulder. He spun around, his guard raised. Shelby dropped low swinging her leg out, sweeping Wing's feet out from under him and sending him crashing to the floor. “Wounded pride, possible humiliation” Shelby said with a grin offering her hand to Wing and pulling him up off the floor. “and so ends today's lesson” she said pulling off her head guard. “an unconventional tactic” Wing said with a nod, taking off his own helmet. “but a successful one none the less” “ I kinda like unconventional tactics” Shelby said stepping towards him. “never underestimate the power of surprise” She grabbed the back of his neck and kissed him for a few long seconds. “what was that about maintaining your guard?” she said with a smile as she pulled away from him. “sometimes one should let ones guard down” Wing said staring at her for a moment before drawing her towards him and kissed her back. “Er...guys?” a familiar voice said causing Wing and Shelby to spring apart. “Dr Nero wants you to report to the briefing room” Wing winced slightly as he saw Nigel and Franz standing in the doorway. Nigel was looking pointedly at the floor and Franz was staring at him and Shelby, his mouth hanging open in surprise. “come on big guy - no rest for the wicked” Shelby said to Wing with a grin, taking his hand and dragging him out of the room past Nigel and the stunned looking Franz.

I watch Ethan try to connect the dots in his head, And suddenly his face falls into a sad smile. "Oh," he says. And that's all. I walk over to him, my bare feet sinking into the sand as I trudge along. He's grinning at me now, but it's not the usual plastered-on smile he usually has. This one is somehow more authentic. When I'm within a few feet of him, he holds his arms out. "You're going to be such a good leader," he says. "I'm so proud of you, Five." I embrace Ethan. His arms fold around me as he pats me on the back. He lets out a long, slow sigh and then starts to say something. I cut him off before he can get the words out. I can't stand to hear him say another thing. "Ethan, I'm really sorry about this. But it's for the best." I can feel his body clench as the blade slips out of my forearm sheath and into his back. It slides between his ribs-a lucky shot- then retracts back into my hoodie sleeve. It's over in an instant. I step away from him. He stands frozen, probably in shock. There's a deep spot of read blooming across the right side of his chest where the blade must have broken the skin. Blood drops down from the hidden wrist sheath, running over my right hand before falling from my fingertips to the sand. "It's over," I murmur, more to myself than to Ethan. He's probably not paying much attention to what I have to say. Tears are welling in his good eye, but I don't know if they're for me or for himself. He blinks once and then falls to the beach with a soft thud.

HlI watch Ethan try to connect the dots in his head, And suddenly his face falls into a sad smile. "Oh," he says. And that's all. I walk over to him, my bare feet sinking into the sand as I trudge along. He's grinning at me now, but it's not the usual plastered-on smile he usually has. This one is somehow more authentic. When I'm within a few feet of him, he holds his arms out. "You're going to be such a good leader," he says. "I'm so proud of you, Five." I embrace Ethan. His arms fold around me as he pats me on the back. He lets out a long, slow sigh and then starts to say something. I cut him off before he can get the words out. I can't stand to hear him say another thing. "Ethan, I'm really sorry about this. But it's for the best." I can feel his body clench as the blade slips out of my forearm sheath and into his back. It slides between his ribs-a lucky shot- then retracts back into my hoodie sleeve. It's over in an instant. I step away from him. He stands frozen, probably in shock. There's a deep spot of read blooming across the right side of his chest where the blade must have broken the skin. Blood drops down from the hidden wrist sheath, running over my right hand before falling from my fingertips to the sand. "It's over," I murmur, more to myself than to Ethan. He's probably not paying much attention to what I have to say. Tears are welling in his good eye, but I don't know if they're for me or for himself. He blinks once and then falls to the beach with a soft thud.

May 19th 2031_ Eleven months before_ I opened my eyes to see darkness and the sound of my alarm beeping. 0400 hours. I turned it off and got up. I looked for my glasses on my bedside cabinet and put them on. "Alexa, Good morning roll," I said loudly in the dark room. The lights came on and the curtains opened, the speaker turned on and started playing my Spotify playlist. I slowly got dressed and made myself breakfast. After breakfast, I downed a 500ml bottle of zero coke. I leaned to one side and burped. I looked around my kitchen. The dark marble counter and white cupboards, walls and ceiling matched with each other. I looked outside the kitchen window at the traffic down below. I was about 6 floors high, if you were to jump off from that high, there is a very high chance you might die. And if you were lucky to survive, you would be immobilised from your broken legs and hip and ribs. I turned around and sat on the black leathery sofa and switched on the TV. I looked on Netflix at old World War Two films that I could watch before bed. I scrolled through the list. From 'Dunkirk' to 'Unbroken' to a lot more films. I chose a couple and switched the TV onto the news. The reporter said that there was a knife crime in Redding earlier. I sighed but was relieved that it wasn't me. It is a low chance that I would get murdered by someone or people with knives in England but it's still a possibility. I turned the TV off and looked at my phone. There was nothing new on Discord and nothing new on WhatsApp. I checked my Snapchat and opened a few Snaps from my friends at work. I took a selfie of myself in my apartment not working. I sent it off and was happy that I don't work on

Mike continued to walk unhurriedly toward the crowd until he loomed up in the stereo tank in life size, as if he were in the room with his water brothers. He stopped on the grass verge in front of the hotel, a few feet from the crowd. "You called me?" He was answered with a growl. The sky held scattered clouds; at that instant the sun came out from behind one and a shaft of golden light hit him. His clothes vanished. He stood before them, a golden youth, clothed only in his own beauty, beauty that made Jubal's heart ache, thinking that Michelangelo in his ancient years would have climbed down from his high scaffolding to record it for generations unborn. Mike said gently, "Look at me. I am a son of man." . . . . "God damn you!" A half brick caught Mike in the ribs. He turned his face slightly toward his assailant. "But you yourself are God. You can damn only yourself and you can never escape yourself." "Blasphemer!" A rock caught him just over his left eye and blood welled forth. Mike said calmly, "In fighting me, you fight yourself... for Thou art God and I am God * . . and all that groks is God-there is no other." More rocks hit him, from various directions; he began to bleed in several places. "Hear the Truth. You need not hate, you need not fight, you need not fear. I offer you the water of life-" Suddenly his hand held a tumbler of water, sparkling in the sunlight. "-and you may share it whenever you so will . . . and walk in peace and love and happiness together." A rock caught the glass and shattered it. Another struck him in the mouth. Through bruised and bleeding lips he smiled at them, looking straight into the camera with an expression of yearning tenderness on his face. Some trick of sunlight and stereo formed a golden halo back of his head. "Oh my brothers, I love you so! Drink deep. Share and grow closer without end. Thou art God." Jubal whispered it back to him. . . . "Lynch him! Give the bastard a nigger necktie!" A heavy-gauge shotgun blasted at close range and Mike's right arm was struck off at the elbow and fell. It floated gently down, then came to rest on the cool grasses, its hand curved open in invitation. "Give him the other barrel, Shortie-and aim closer!" The crowd laughed and applauded. A brick smashed Mike's nose and more rocks gave him a crown of blood. "The Truth is simple but the Way of Man is hard. First you must learn to control yourself. The rest follows. Blessed is he who knows himself and commands himself, for the world is his and love and happiness and peace walk with him wherever he goes." Another shotgun blast was followed by two more shots. One shot, a forty-five slug, hit Mike over the heart, shattering the sixth rib near the sternum and making a large wound; the buckshot and the other slug sheered through his left tibia five inches below the patella and left the fibula sticking out at an angle, broken and white against the yellow and red of the wound. Mike staggered slightly and laughed, went on talking, his words clear and unhurried. "Thou art God. Know that and the Way is opened." "God damn it-let's stop this taking the Name of the Lord in vain!"- "Come on, men! Let's finish him!" The mob surged forward, led by one bold with a club; they were on him with rocks and fists, and then with feet as he went down. He went on talking while they kicked his ribs in and smashed his golden body, broke his bones and tore an ear loose. At last someone called out, "Back away a little so we can get the gasoline on him!" The mob opened up a little at that waning and the camera zoomed to pick up his face and shoulders. The Man from Mars smiled at his brothers, said once more, softly and clearly, "I love you." An incautious grasshopper came whirring to a landing on the grass a few inches from his face; Mike turned his head, looked at it as it stared back at him. "Thou art God," he said happily and discorporated.

Reagan Truman’s cell phone clamored in the darkness. It took several rings to find it. “Hello,” she mumbled, hoping she didn’t wake her uncle in the next room. “Rea, this is Noah.” “It’s late, Noah.” She pulled she string on an old Tiffany-style lamp that was probably five times her age. Something was wrong; not even Noah called this late. “I know, Rea. But I need to talk to you.” She shoved her hair out of her face and tried to force sleep away. “All right, what’s up?” “I’m in the hospital, Rea. I was hurt tonight in Memphis.” “How bad?” she laughed nervously. She’d almost asked if he was still alive. There was a long pause on the line. “I don’t know. Bad. Broken arm, two ribs, but it’s my back that has me worried.” He didn’t speak for a moment. When he began again, he sounded more like a frightened boy than a man of twenty. “I’m hurt bad enough to maybe kick me off the circuit. When I hit the dirt, I was out cold. They said I kept yelling your name in the ambulance, but I don’t remember. All I remember is the pain.” “Noah, what can I do? Do you want me to go over to your folk’s house? I think they’re in town. I could call your sister, Alex.” “No, I don’t want them to worry. I know mom. She’ll freak out and dad will start lecturing me like I’m still a kid. I don’t want them to know anything until I know how serious it is. They’re still not telling me much yet.” He paused, and she knew he was fighting to keep his voice calm. “Rea, I got to face this before I ask them to. If it’s nothing, they don’t even need to know. If it’s crippling, I got to have a plan.” She understood. Noah had always been their positive, sunny child. The McAllens had already lost one son eight years ago. She’d seen the panic in their eyes once when Noah had been admitted to the hospital after an accident. She understood why he’d want to save them pain. “What can I do?” He was silent for a moment, and then he said simply, “Come get me. No matter how bad it is, I want you near when I find out.

God’s Message to Women When I created the heavens and the earth, I spoke them into being.  When I created man, I formed him and breathed life into his nostrils. But you, woman, I fashioned after I breathed the breath of life into man because your nostrils are too delicate.  I allowed a deep sleep to come over him so I could patiently fashion you.  Man was put to sleep so he could not interfere with the creativity. From one bone I fashioned you, and I chose the bone that protects man’s life.  I chose the rib, which protects his heart and lungs and supports him as you are meant to do.  Around this one bone, I shaped and modeled you. I created you perfectly and beautifully.  Your characteristics are as the rib, strong yet delicate and fragile.  You provide protection for the most delicate organ in man, his heart.  His heart is the center of his being; his lungs hold the breath of life.  The rib cage will allow itself to be broken before it will allow damage to the heart.  Support man as the rib cage supports the body.  You were not taken from his feet to be under him, nor were you taken from his head to be above him.  You were taken from his side to be held close as you stand beside him. I have caressed your face in your deepest sleep. I have held your heart close to Mine. Adam walked with Me in the cool of the day and yet he was lonely. He could not see or touch Me but could only feel My presence.  So I fashioned in you everything I wanted Adam to share and experience with Me: My holiness, My strength, My purity, My love, My protection and support. You are special because you are an extension of Me.  Man represents My image–woman My emotions. Together, you represent the totality of God. So man, treat woman well. Love and respect her, for she is fragile.  In hurting her, you hurt Me. In crushing her, you only damage your own heart. Woman, support man.  In humility, show him the power of emotion I have placed within you.  In gentle quietness show your strength.  In love, show him that you are the rib that protects his inner self. —Author Unknown

INTERNATIONAL LAW WAS CREATED DURING THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION BECAUSE a group of Mexicans—and one African American—gang-raped and murdered two teenaged girls in Houston, Texas.1 The crime made history in another way: It led to the most death sentences handed out for a single crime in Texas since 1949.2 Do you even know about this case? The only reason the media eventually admitted that the lead rapist, Jose Ernesto Medellin, was an illegal alien from Mexico was to try to overturn his conviction on the grounds that he had not been informed of his right, as a Mexican citizen, to confer with the Mexican consulate. Journalists have an irritating tendency to skimp on detail when reporting crimes by immigrants, a practice that will not be followed here. One summer night in June 1993, fourteen-year-old Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Peña, who had just turned sixteen, were returning from a pool party, and decided to take a shortcut through a park to make their 11:30 p.m. curfew. They encountered a group of Hispanic men, who were in the process of discussing “gang etiquette,” such as not complaining if other members talked about having sex with your mother.3 The girls ran away, but Medellin grabbed Jennifer and began ripping her clothes off. Hearing her screams, Elizabeth came back to help her friend. For more than an hour, the five Hispanics and one black man raped the teens, vaginally, anally, and orally—“every way you can assault a human being,” as the prosecutor put it.4 The girls were beaten, kicked, and stomped, their teeth knocked out and their ribs broken. One of the Hispanic men told Medellin’s fourteen-year-old brother to “get some,” so he raped one of the girls, too. But when it was time to kill the girls, Medellin said his brother was “too small to watch” and dragged the girls into the woods.5 There, the girls were forced to kneel on the ground and a belt or shoelace was looped around their necks. Then a man on each side pulled on the cord as hard as he could. The men strangling Jennifer pulled so hard they broke the belt. Medellin later complained that “the bitch wouldn’t die.” When it was done, he repeatedly stomped on the girls’ necks, to make sure they were dead.6 At trial, Medellin’s sister-in-law testified that shortly after the gruesome murders, Medellin was laughing about it, saying they’d “had some fun with some girls” and boasting that he had “virgin blood” on his underpants.7 It’s difficult to understand a culture where such an orgy of cruelty is bragged about at all, but especially in front of women.

The four women came to see them at the house later in the afternoon. Alexander and Tatiana were playing soccer. Actually Tatiana had just gotten the ball away from him and, squealing, was trying to hold on to it, while he was behind her, trying to kick it from under her. He had lifted her off the ground and was pressing himself hard into her while she was shrieking. All he was wearing was his skivvies, and all she was wearing was his ribbed top and her underwear. Flummoxed, Tatiana stood in front of Alexander, trying to shield his near-naked body from four pairs of wide eyes. He stood behind her, his arms on her shoulders, and Tatiana heard him say, “Tell them—No, forget it, I will,” and before she could utter a sound, he came forward, walked up to them, twice their size, bare and unrelentingly himself, and said, “Ladies, in the future you might want to wait for us to come and see you.” “Shura,” Tatiana muttered, “go and get dressed.” “Soccer is probably the least of what you’ll see,” Alexander said into the women’s stunned faces before going inside the house. When he came back out, suitably covered, he told Tatiana he was going to the village to get a couple of things they needed, like ice and an ax. “What an odd combination,” she remarked. “Where are you going to get ice from?” “The fish plant. They have to refrigerate their fish, don’t they?” “Ax?” “From that nice man Igor,” Alexander yelled, walking up the clearing, blowing her a kiss. She gazed after him. “Hurry back,” she called. Naira Mikhailovna apologized hastily. Dusia was mouthing a prayer. Raisa shook. Axinya beamed at Tatiana, who invited them all for a bit of kvas. “Come inside. See how nicely Alexander cleaned the house. And look, he repaired the door. Remember, the top hinge was broken?” The four women looked around for a place to sit. “Tanechka,” said Naira nervously, “there is no furniture in here.” Axinya whooped. Dusia crossed herself. “I know, Naira Mikhailovna. We don’t need much.” She looked down on the floor. “We have some things, we have my trunk. Alexander said he will make us a bench. I’ll bring my desk with the sewing machine…we’ll be fine.” “But how—” “Oh, Naira,” said Axinya, “leave the girl alone, will you?” Dusia glared at the rumpled bedsheets on top of the stove. A flustered Tatiana smiled. Alexander was right. It was better to go and visit them. She asked when would be a good time to come for dinner. Naira said, “Come tonight, of course. We’ll celebrate. But you come every night. Look, you won’t be able to eat here at all. There’s nowhere even to sit or cook. You’ll starve. Come every night. That’s not too much to ask, is it?

Iofur had noticed. He began to taunt Iorek, calling him broken-hand, whimpering cub, rust-eaten, soon-to-die, and other names, all the while swinging blows at him from right and left which Iorek could no longer parry. Iorek had to move backward, a step at a time, and to crouch low under the rain of blows from the jeering bear-king. Lyra was in tears. Her dear, her brave one, her fearless defender, was going to die, and she would not do him the treachery of looking away, for if he looked at her he must see her shining eyes and their love and belief, not a face hidden in cowardice or a shoulder fearfully turned away. So she looked, but her tears kept her from seeing what was really happening, and perhaps it would not have been visible to her anyway. It certainly was not seen by Iofur. Because Iorek was moving backward only to find clean dry footing and a firm rock to leap up from, and the useless left arm was really fresh and strong. You could not trick a bear, but, as Lyra had shown him, Iofur did not want to be a bear, he wanted to be a man; and Iorek was tricking him. At last he found what he wanted: a firm rock deep-anchored in the permafrost. He backed against it, tensing his legs and choosing his moment. It came when Iofur reared high above, bellowing his triumph, and turning his head tauntingly toward Iorek’s apparently weak left side. That was when Iorek moved. Like a wave that has been building its strength over a thousand miles of ocean, and which makes little stir in the deep water, but which when it reaches the shallows rears itself up high into the sky, terrifying the shore dwellers, before crashing down on the land with irresistible power—so Iorek Byrnison rose up against Iofur, exploding upward from his firm footing on the dry rock and slashing with a ferocious left hand at the exposed jaw of Iofur Raknison. It was a horrifying blow. It tore the lower part of his jaw clean off, so that it flew through the air scattering blood drops in the snow many yards away. Iofur’s red tongue lolled down, dripping over his open throat. The bear-king was suddenly voiceless, biteless, helpless. Iorek needed nothing more. He lunged, and then his teeth were in Iofur’s throat, and he shook and shook this way, that way, lifting the huge body off the ground and battering it down as if Iofur were no more than a seal at the water’s edge. Then he ripped upward, and Iofur Raknison’s life came away in his teeth. There was one ritual yet to perform. Iorek sliced open the dead king’s unprotected chest, peeling the fur back to expose the narrow white and red ribs like the timbers of an upturned boat. Into the rib cage Iorek reached, and he plucked out Iofur’s heart, red and steaming, and ate it there in front of Iofur’s subjects.

What would the ton do without us to feed them scandal broth?” Grey returned her grin. “The lot of them would starve.” They chuckled and as the humor faded, Grey tilted his head to look at her. “You look beautiful tonight.” She flushed, pleasure lighting the dark depths of her eyes. “You don’t have to say such things.” “I know I don’t, but you are my fiancée and it’s perfectly acceptable for me to voice my thoughts aloud. It’s rather refreshing after keeping them to myself for so long.” That got her attention. One of her fine, high brows twitched. “How long?” He grinned. “Since you were old enough for me to think such thoughts without being lecherous.” They stood no more than six inches apart. Close enough that he could see how amazingly flawless her skin was-not a freckle in sight. Close enough that she could see every twist and knot in his scar-and yet she barely glanced at it. Her gaze was riveted on his. She didn’t care that he was disfigured-at least not on the outside. Not on the inside either, so it seemed. “I’ve never been a good man,” he confessed-a little more hoarse than he liked-“but I promise to be a faithful husband.” It was the best he could offer, because as much as he would like to be the man she wanted, it wasn’t going to happen. Her smooth brow puckered. “I haven’t actually consented, you know.” “Rose, we have to marry.” “No.” She raised sparkling eyes to his. “I want you to ask me to marry you-not demand it. I don’t care if it has to be done. I want to feel like I have a choice.” “If you did have a choice, what would it be?” He was on dangerous ground with her, inching into territory better left unexplored for both their sakes. Rose smiled, and everything was right with the world. “Ask me and find out.” His hands came up, seemingly of their own volition, to cup her face. She was so delicate, yet so strong. Her entire world had been turned upside down, and yet she faced him with a teasing glint in her eyes and a soft flush of color in her cheeks. “Rose Danvers, will you do me the extreme honor of becoming my wife?” Were those tears dampening her eyes? And was it joy or sorrow that put them there? “I will.” He knew that they had to marry regardless, but hearing her say those two little words was like someone kicking his heart through his ribs. It hurt, but there was such unfathomable joy that came with it-such terrible happiness that Grey had no idea what to do with it. He’d never felt anything like it before. Holding her face, he lowered his head and hungrily claimed her mouth with his own. Her lips parted for his tongue as her fingers bit into his arms. A trickle of warm wetness brushed against his thumb. She was crying. A sharp gasp came from the open door. “What the devil is going on here?” The kiss and its magic were broken. Rose stepped back, and Grey dropped his hands, but he wasn’t willing to let her go just yet. He placed one arm behind her back, holding her close so that they faced her mother together. Camilla did not look happy. In fact, she looked like any mother would to walk into a room and find her daughter being molested. “Mama,” Rose begun. “It’s not what you think.” “It is exactly what you think,” Grey countered, drawing his friend’s stormy and narrow gaze. “I have asked Rose for her hand in marriage and she has accepted. I regret that you had to find out this way, but I was too overcome with joy to contain my feelings.” He could feel Rose gaping at him. He didn’t look at her, not because the words were a lie, but because they were all too damnably true.

Brothers, when we find our rib, we’ll be able to inhale and exhale a lot easier. However, if it’s the wrong one, she will give you asthma and emphysema.

It’s not that I don’t love you. It’s the sound I heard when I was 9 and my father slammed the front door so hard behind him I swear to god it shook the whole house. For the next 3 years I watched my mother break her teeth on vodka bottles. I think she stopped breathing when he left. I think part of her died. I think he took her heart with him when he walked out. Her chest is empty, just a shattered mess or cracked ribs and depression pills. It’s not that I don’t love you. It’s all the blood in the sink. It’s the night that I spent 12 hours in the emergency room waiting to see if my sister was going to be okay, after the boy she loved, told her he didn’t love her anymore. It’s the crying, and the fluorescent lights, and white sneakers and pale faces and shaky breaths and blood. So much blood. It’s not that I don’t love you. It’s the time that I had to stay up for two days straight with my best friend while she cried and shrieked and threw up on my bedroom floor because her boyfriend fucked his ex. I swear to god she still has tear streaks stained onto her cheeks. I think when you love someone, it never really goes away. It’s not that I don’t love you. It’s the six weeks we had a substitute in English because our teacher was getting divorced and couldn’t handle getting out of bed. When she came back she was smiling. But her hands shook so hard when she held her coffee, you could see that something was broken inside. And sometimes when things break, you can’t fix them. Nothing ever goes back to how it was. I got an A in English that year. I think her head was always spinning too hard to read any essays. It’s not that I don’t love you. It’s that I do.

Lorent liked the look of it so much he took it for himself, and my bloody father never dared to tell him no. When I complained, Lorent told me to my face that my hand was made to hold a hammer, not a sword. So I went and got a hammer and beat him with it, till both his arms and half his ribs were broken.