Cascade Love Quotes

There was a clatter as the basilisk fangs cascaded out of Hermione's arms. Running at Ron, she flung them around his neck and kissed him full on the mouth. Ron threw away the fangs and broomstick he was holding and responded with such enthusiasm that he lifted Hermione off her feet. "Is this the moment?" Harry asked weakly, and when nothing happened except that Ron and Hermione gripped each other still more firmly and swayed on the spot, he raised his voice. "OI! There's a war going on here!" Ron and Hermione broke apart, their arms still around each other. "I know, mate," said Ron, who looked as though he had recently been hit on the back of the head with a Bludger, "so it's now or never, isn't it?" "Never mind that, what about the Horcrux?" Harry shouted. "D'you think you could just --- just hold it in, until we've got the diadem?" "Yeah --- right --- sorry ---" said Ron, and he and Hermione set about gathering up fangs, both pink in the face.

She’s like poetry. Like prose and love letters and lyrics, cascading down the center of a page.

Take bread away from me, if you wish, take air away, but do not take from me your laughter. Do not take away the rose, the lance flower that you pluck, the water that suddenly bursts forth in joy, the sudden wave of silver born in you. My struggle is harsh and I come back with eyes tired at times from having seen the unchanging earth, but when your laughter enters it rises to the sky seeking me and it opens for me all the doors of life. My love, in the darkest hour your laughter opens, and if suddenly you see my blood staining the stones of the street, laugh, because your laughter will be for my hands like a fresh sword. Next to the sea in the autumn, your laughter must raise its foamy cascade, and in the spring, love, I want your laughter like the flower I was waiting for, the blue flower, the rose of my echoing country. Laugh at the night, at the day, at the moon, laugh at the twisted streets of the island, laugh at this clumsy fool who loves you, but when I open my eyes and close them, when my steps go, when my steps return, deny me bread, air, light, spring, but never your laughter.

When the immense drugged universe explodes In a cascade of unendurable colour And leaves us gasping naked, This is no more than the ectasy of chaos: Hold fast, with both hands, to that royal love Which alone, as we know certainly, restores Fragmentation into true being. Ecstasy of Chaos

To be inspired is great, but to inspire is an honor.

Often when I imagine you, your wholeness cascades into many shapes. You run like a herd of luminous deer, and I am dark; I am forest.

Lia aimed, shifted and waited, watching one man peek out time and time again. She let her arrow fly anticipating his next peek at us and it pierced his eye. “Okay that’s just going to make ’em mad ” I said. “Three hundred and ninety-two ” she said to Luca tossing her braid over her shoulder and taking aim again. “Saints in heaven ” he said to me rolling his eyes “how much deeper in love can I yet fall?

What swells inside me is a love so boundless, I am the sunrise and sunset. I am Liberty Bell in the Cascades. I am Beihai Lake. I am every beautiful, truly beautiful, thing I've ever seen, captured in my personal Geographia, the atlas of myself.

I want something good to die for. . . to make it beautiful to live.

He loves the sparkling fountains and their cascades and says the strangest things as he watches them. they look like stars breaking. Or, They look like Mama's diamonds. Or, They look like all the souls in heaven.

Love. It felt like a falling raindrop scatter on a trembling leaf then roll of its tip in a cascade of pearls

Something cascaded lightly through me—a gentling, a suffused glow. If love could be morphed into a physical element, this would be it. It was strength and yet it was vulnerability. It was all-encompassing and yet it was freedom. It was a wall of protection. It was wings of trust and faith. It was Gabriel Ross Sullivan, answering the questions I couldn’t ask. Not that everything would be okay, but that everything in his power would be done, and we’d face whatever outcomes there were together.

Those hours given over to basking in the glow of an imagined future, of being carried away in streams of promise by a love or a passion so strong that one felt altered forever and convinced that even the smallest particle of the surrounding world was charged with purpose of impossible grandeur; ah, yes, and one would look up into the trees and be thrilled by the wind- loosened river of pale, gold foliage cascading down and by the high, melodious singing of countless birds; those moments, so many and so long ago, still come back, but briefly, like fireflies in the perfumed heat of summer night.

I love how grown children will still name their mothers the most beautiful. It is as though, their eyes have met the cascading curves and golden silhouettes of every woman. Yet their souls still drum to the beat  of their mother's warmth and care.

every moment is a pink moment cascading calm love U.

Then she got up, went to Monty's mirror, and began combing her hair, while little cadenzas absentmindedly cascaded out of her throat, and cold drops cascaded over Mildred's heart. For Veda was stark naked. From the massive, singer's torso, with the Dairy quaking in front, to the slim hips, to the lovely legs, there wasn't so much as a garter to hide a path of skin.

I was painted to celebrate the wild cascades of love, the rollicking, bucking, breaking and transformative passion that inevitably gave way to miserable, constricting, overbearing disappointment.

My love, suddenly your hip is the curve of the wineglass filled to the brim, your breast is the cluster, your hair the light of alcohol, your nipples, the grapes your navel pure seal stamped on your barrel of a belly, and your love the cascade of unquenchable wine, the brightness that falls on my senses, the earthen splendor of life.

Love is fleeting. It’s a brief spark that flares in the heavens, bursting forth in a cascade of glory only to be snuffed out in the darkness of space. It is not something worth risking the cosmos over.

I am billionaire bold bright omnipotent lively determined to go within to win opening my omnific eyes to realize wisdom innovation naturalizes… My cascading flow of financial love lavishly streams gold bars as I realize gold is intrinsic wealth as my intuitive imagination is my intrinsic innovations…

Edges I am a child throwing rocks into the stream. Challenging the rushing water. Raising my fist and daring fate to do it worst. I am a dancer in the waves of the ocean. Swaying in time with the tide. Pirouetting, the current my only friend. I am the sun, rising across the canyon Ascending, and shinning down. Giving the illusion of perception and motion. I am thoughts like a rolling river. Water cascading over the rocks of my soul. Shaping, forming, conforming. I am the peace of the rain forest. Basking in solitude Tranquil, serene, transfixing angles. Reflecting from within. Dripping and dropping. Shaking it off. I am the dust of the galaxy. Yearning to know itself. I am the wind. Wandering. Searching. A storm brewing from within.

A young woman stood in the hallway, a suitcase at her feet, a cardboard carton in her hands. She wore a yellow cotton dress with a white flower print. The silver dragonfly on her necklace hung in the hollow of her collarbone and her thick red hair cascaded past her sunburned shoulders. She will tell you that she hadn't chosen that dress with any care, or the necklace, that she hadn't washed her hair or scrubbed her face, put a little red on her lips. Don't believe it. No one looks that good by accident.

If we define ourselves by each of the ever-changing feelings that cascade through us, how will we ever feel at home in our own bodies and minds?

Come into my world. I will show you the phenomenon that Stendhal experienced. I will help you feel the cascading arpeggios of Wagner's overture. I will dance to Doga’s waltzes with you. A day spent without appreciating the beauty surrounding us is a waste. Let me appreciate you

It was she made me acquainted with love. She went by the peaceful name of Ruth I think, but I can't say for certain. Perhaps the name was Edith. She had a hole between her legs, oh not the bunghole I had always imagined, but a slit, and in this I put, or rather she put, my so-called virile member, not without difficulty, and I toiled and moiled until I discharged or gave up trying or was begged by her to stop. A mug's game in my opinion and tiring on top of that, in the long run. But I lent myself to it with a good enough grace, knowing it was love, for she had told me so. She bent over the couch, because of her rheumatism, and in I went from behind. It was the only position she could bear, because of her lumbago. It seemed all right to me, for I had seen dogs, and I was astonished when she confided that you could go about it differently. I wonder what she meant exactly. Perhaps after all she put me in her rectum. A matter of complete indifference to me, I needn't tell you. But is it true love, in the rectum? That's what bothers me sometimes. Have I never known true love, after all? She too was an eminently flat woman and she moved with short stiff steps, leaning on an ebony stick. Perhaps she too was a man, yet another of them. But in that case surely our testicles would have collided, while we writhed. Perhaps she held hers tight in her hand, on purpose to avoid it. She favoured voluminous tempestuous shifts and petticoats and other undergarments whose names I forget. They welled up all frothing and swishing and then, congress achieved, broke over us in slow cascades. And all I could see was her taut yellow nape which every now and then I set my teeth in, forgetting I had none, such is the power of instinct. We met in a rubbish dump, unlike any other, and yet they are all alike, rubbish dumps. I don't know what she was doing there. I was limply poking about in the garbage saying probably, for at that age I must still have been capable of general ideas, This is life. She had no time to lose, I had nothing to lose, I would have made love with a goat, to know what love was. She had a dainty flat, no, not dainty, it made you want to lie down in a corner and never get up again. I liked it. It was full of dainty furniture, under our desperate strokes the couch moved forward on its castors, the whole place fell about our ears, it was pandemonium. Our commerce was not without tenderness, with trembling hands she cut my toe-nails and I rubbed her rump with winter cream. This idyll was of short duration. Poor Edith, I hastened her end perhaps. Anyway it was she who started it, in the rubbish dump, when she laid her hand upon my fly. More precisely, I was bent double over a heap of muck, in the hope of finding something to disgust me for ever with eating, when she, undertaking me from behind, thrust her stick between my legs and began to titillate my privates. She gave me money after each session, to me who would have consented to know love, and probe it to the bottom, without charge. But she was an idealist. I would have preferred it seems to me an orifice less arid and roomy, that would have given me a higher opinion of love it seems to me. However. Twixt finger and thumb tis heaven in comparison. But love is no doubt above such contingencies. And not when you are comfortable, but when your frantic member casts about for a rubbing-place, and the unction of a little mucous membrane, and meeting with none does not beat in retreat, but retains its tumefaction, it is then no doubt that true love comes to pass, and wings away, high above the tight fit and the loose.

A Wild Woman Is Not A Girlfriend. She Is A Relationship With Nature. But can you love me in the deep? In the dark? In the thick of it? Can you love me when I drink from the wrong bottle and slip through the crack in the floorboard? Can you love me when I’m bigger than you, when my presence blazes like the sun does, when it hurts to look directly at me? Can you love me then too? Can you love me under the starry sky, shaved and smooth, my skin like liquid moonlight? Can you love me when I am howling and furry, standing on my haunches, my lower lip stained with the blood of my last kill? When I call down the lightning, when the sidewalks are singed by the soles of my feet, can you still love me then? What happens when I freeze the land, and cause the dirt to harden over all the pomegranate seeds we’ve planted? Will you trust that Spring will return? Will you still believe me when I tell you I will become a raging river, and spill myself upon your dreams and call them to the surface of your life? Can you trust me, even though you cannot tame me? Can you love me, even though I am all that you fear and admire? Will you fear my shifting shape? Does it frighten you, when my eyes flash like your camera does? Do you fear they will capture your soul? Are you afraid to step into me? The meat-eating plants and flowers armed with poisonous darts are not in my jungle to stop you from coming. Not you. So do not worry. They belong to me, and I have invited you here. Stay to the path revealed in the moonlight and arrive safely to the hut of Baba Yaga: the wild old wise one… she will not lead you astray if you are pure of heart. You cannot be with the wild one if you fear the rumbling of the ground, the roar of a cascading river, the startling clap of thunder in the sky. If you want to be safe, go back to your tiny room — the night sky is not for you. If you want to be torn apart, come in. Be broken open and devoured. Be set ablaze in my fire. I will not leave you as you have come: well dressed, in finely-threaded sweaters that keep out the cold. I will leave you naked and biting. Leave you clawing at the sheets. Leave you surrounded by owls and hawks and flowers that only bloom when no one is watching. So, come to me, and be healed in the unbearable lightness and darkness of all that you are. There is nothing in you that can scare me. Nothing in you I will not use to make you great. A wild woman is not a girlfriend. She is a relationship with nature. She is the source of all your primal desires, and she is the wild whipping wind that uproots the poisonous corn stalks on your neatly tilled farm. She will plant pear trees in the wake of your disaster. She will see to it that you shall rise again. She is the lover who restores you to your own wild nature.

water pacifies the mind, the spirit, and the body...it soothes us, cleans us, refreshes us...we need it to survive, and there is something so calming and beautiful in the entrancing dance of water as it falls down a cascade, it is pure falling peace for our soul

A silky rustling sound came from behind him. He turned, and saw Helen standing there in a white dress made of thin, glimmering layers of silk trimmed with lace. The dress clung to her slender form, the skirts pulled back to outline her hips and cascading gently behind her. She pulled back a filmy white veil sewn with lace and seed pearls, and smiled at him. She was unearthly in her beauty, as light and delicate as a wash of rainbow through morning mist. He held a hand over his hammering heart, as if to keep it from leaping out of his chest.

Arising there, a china cabinet, its gifts enclosed in a hug. Atop a pedestal table, hand-sanded and love-stained, Mom's Christmas cactus trails and cascades in forest greens awaiting pink-winged petals alighting in season, a crescendo of bloom framed an autumn-light meandering through remembrance like a dream.

Everyone watching us from a distance faded away, and I looked down at his hair matted to his scalp and temples, droplets cascading down his cheeks and over his lashes, and all I wanted in the world was to stare at him forever. “I build with you now,” he whispered to me, the heat of his mouth on my lips. “We make Thunder Bay together, Em. I love you.

This is meant to be in praise of the interval called hangover, a sadness not co-terminous with hopelessness, and the North American doubling cascade that (keep going) “this diamond lake is a photo lab” and if predicates really do propel the plot then you might see Jerusalem in a soap bubble or the appliance failures on Olive Street across these great instances, because “the complex Italians versus the basic Italians” because what does a mirror look like (when it´s not working) but birds singing a full tone higher in the sunshine. I´m going to call them Honest Eyes until I know if they are, in the interval called slam clicker, Realm of Pacific, because the second language wouldn´t let me learn it because I have heard of you for a long time occasionally because diet cards may be the recovery evergreen and there is a new benzodiazepene called Distance, anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship. I suppose a broken window is not symbolic unless symbolic means broken, which I think it sorta does, and when the phone jangles what´s more radical, the snow or the tires, and what does the Bible say about metal fatigue and why do mothers carry big scratched-up sunglasses in their purses. Hello to the era of going to the store to buy more ice because we are running out. Hello to feelings that arrive unintroduced. Hello to the nonfunctional sprig of parsley and the game of finding meaning in coincidence. Because there is a second mind in the margins of the used book because Judas Priest (source: Firestone Library) sang a song called Stained Class, because this world is 66% Then and 33% Now, and if you wake up thinking “feeling is a skill now” or “even this glass of water seems complicated now” and a phrase from a men´s magazine (like single-district cognac) rings and rings in your neck, then let the consequent misunderstandings (let the changer love the changed) wobble on heartbreakingly nu legs into this street-legal nonfiction, into this good world, this warm place that I love with all my heart, anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship.

Satanism, in principle, is a perverse projection of the Law into matter. Therefore, even this path has its aesthetic elements. For there are also artists of evil, artists who can give flowing blood the magic of a crimson evening afterglow—adepts of delusion, who with a mere sight, evoke the seductive song of Death and loathsome orgies turn into a wild cascade of ardent memories.

I’ve got places to be, so I guess we have to cut this short, if you’ll excuse the pun,” I say before I drive my blade beneath his ear. Blood cascades over the table in a flood of crimson.  “It’s game night.

You wrapped your wings against my soul, calmly cascaded tears into eternal waters, where I sat in solitude, waiting ephemerally, for those hours of lost comfort once again, how long ago did sleep become such an end?

This is Doctor Norton. Who's calling?" "Step N’Wolfe- the owner of the Emerald Cascade Ranch on Green Valley Road. I have a horse in labor and the baby's already coming out of the horse's ass." "You should of called sooner.

Those rose-tinted glasses look good on you, Sunshine.” Sunshine? I was sure he meant that mockingly, but the butterflies in my stomach stirred to life anyway, fanning away my anger. Traitors. “Thanks. You can borrow them. You need them more than I do,” I said pointedly. A low chuckle slipped from his throat, and I almost fell to the floor in shock. Tonight was turning out to be a night of firsts. Alex’s hand trailed up my spine until it rested on the back of my neck, leaving a cascade of tingles in their wake. “I feel it dripping all over me.” He did not—what? An inferno consumed my body. “You’re—you—no, I’m not!” I sputtered, pushing him away and scrambling off him. My core pulsed. Oh my God, what if I was? I couldn’t look, afraid I’d see a telltale wet spot on his jeans. I’d have to move to Antarctica. Build myself an ice cave and learn to speak penguin because I could never show my face in Hazelburg, D.C., or any city where I could run into Alex Volkov again. His chuckle blossomed into a full-blown laugh. The effect of his real smile was so devastating, even amid my mortification, that all I could do was stare at the way his face lit up and the sparkle that transformed his eyes from beautiful to downright breathtaking. Holy crap. Perhaps I should be grateful he never smiled, because if that was what he looked like while doing it…womankind didn’t stand a chance. “I’m talking about your bleeding heart,” he drawled. “What did you think I was talking about?” “I—you—” Forget Antarctica. I had to move to Mars. Alex’s laughter subsided, but the twinkle in his eyes remained.

it was such a lovely night. The moon was round and large, framed perfectly between the buildings like the main character in her own film, reflecting off the windows, cascading silvery light into the warm orange of the streetlights.

One day in the next five hundred billion years, while the probes complete one full circuit of the Milky Way, maybe they’ll stumble upon intelligent life. In forty thousand years or so, when the two probes sail close enough to a planetary system, maybe just maybe one of these plants will be home to some life form which will spy the probe with whatever it has that passes for eyes, stay its telescope, retrieve the derelict fuel-less old probe with whatever it has that passes for curiosity, lower the stylus (supplied) to the record with whatever it has that passes for digits, and set free the dadadadaa of Beethoven’s Fifth. It’ll roll like thunder through a different frontier. Human music will permeate the Milky Way’s outer reaches. There’ll be Chuck Berry and Bach, there’ll be Stravinsky and Blind Willie Johnson, and the didgeridoo, violin, slide guitar and shakuhachi. Whale song will drift through the constellation of Ursa Minor. Perhaps a being on a planet of the star AC +793888 will hear the 1970s recording of sheep bleat, laughter, footsteps, and the soft pluck of a kiss. Perhaps they’ll hear the trundle of a tractor and the voice of a child. When they hear on the phonograph a recording of rapid firecracker drills and bursts, will they know that these sounds denote brainwaves? Will they ever infer that over forty thousand years before in a solar system unknown a woman was rigged to an EEG and her thoughts recorded? Could they know to work backwards from the abstract sounds and translate them once more into brainwaves, and could they know from these brainwaves the kinds of thoughts the woman was having? Could they see into a human’s mind? Could they know she was a young woman in love? Could they tell from this dip and rise in the EEG’s pattern that she was thinking simultaneously of earth and lover as if the two were continuous? Could they see that, though she tried to keep her mental script, to bring to mind Lincoln and the Ice Age and the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt and whatever grand things have shaped the earth and which she wished to convey to an alien audience, every thought cascaded into the drawn brows and proud nose of her lover, the wonderful articulation of his hands and the way he listened like a bird and how they had touched so often without touching. And then a spike in sound as she thought of that great city Alexandria and of nuclear disarmament and the symphony of the earth’s tides and the squareness of his jaw and the way he spoke with such bright precision so that everything he said was epiphany and discovery and the way he looked at her as though she were the epiphany he kept on having and the thud of her heart and the flooding how heat about her body when she considered what it was he wanted to do to her and the migration of bison across a Utah plain and a geisha’s expressionless face and the knowledge of having found that thing in the world which she ought never to have had the good fortune of finding, of two minds and bodies flung at each other at full dumbfounding force so that her life had skittered sidelong and all her pin-boned plans just gone like that and her self engulfed in a fire of longing and thoughts of sex and destiny, the completeness of love, their astounding earth, his hands, his throat, his bare back.

Those rose-tinted glasses look good on you, Sunshine.” Sunshine? I was sure he meant that mockingly, but the butterflies in my stomach stirred to life anyway, fanning away my anger. Traitors. “Thanks. You can borrow them. You need them more than I do,” I said pointedly. A low chuckle slipped from his throat, and I almost fell to the floor in shock. Tonight was turning out to be a night of firsts. Alex’s hand trailed up my spine until it rested on the back of my neck, leaving a cascade of tingles in their wake. “I feel it dripping all over me.

How can I get used to this?” His fingers twisted my nipples before cascading down my noticeable ribcage. “How can I hope to breathe after inhaling you? How can I hope to taste after licking you?” His nose nuzzled my throat. “How am I supposed to live after having you love me?” I

He holds her for an eternity. Time cascades into the void of the past. She inhales his scent. Full of man and strength and yearning. And she wonders why she ever doubted their relationship. Why she let Julian’s soothing touch coax her into loving him too. Gage is everything. Gage is hers.

Our personal story has many chapters that reconnoiter universal themes. We each struggle to understand ourselves and aspire to make ourselves known to the world. We struggle to win the love of other people. We seek to pick all the low hanging fruit that we come across in our journey through the corridor of time. We write our story in the Niagara of emotional experiences that flowing watercourse makes us human. We use a profusion of words, symbols, and the nuances pulled from a rich library of language to depict the cascade of our visions, sounds, smells, tastes, feelings, dreams, and infelicitous thoughts. We use logical and dialectal thought processes when communing with our inner self. We use self-speak along with the esemplastic powers of poetic imagination, sprinkled with the fizz of creativity, to cohere disparate chapters of our life into a unified whole and relay the effervescence of our story to other people.

Carpe Diem By Edna Stewart Shakespeare, Robert Frost, Walt Whitman did it, why can't I? The words of Horace, his laconic phrase. Does it amuse me or frighten me? Does it rub salt in an old wound? Horace, Shakespeare, Robert Frost and Walt Whitman my loves, we've all had a taste of the devils carpe of forbidden food. My belly is full of mourning over life mishaps of should have's, missed pleasure, and why was I ever born? The leaf falls from the trees from which it was born in and cascade down like a feather that tumbles and toil in the wind. One gush! It blows away. It’s trampled, raked, burned and finally turns to ashes which fades away like the leaves of grass. Did Horace get it right? Trust in nothing? The shortness of Life is seventy years, Robert Frost and Whitman bared more, but Shakespeare did not. Butterflies of Curiosities allures me more. Man is mortal, the fruit is ripe. Seize more my darling! Enjoy the day.

She'd piled her hair high, leaving silky tendrils to tease bare shoulders. How he longed to festoon that slender neck with cascades of rubies. Rubies, diamonds, pearls, emeralds. Never sapphires. Not even the finest sapphires could rival the beauty of her eyes. He had no jewels to offer, only his longing, loving heart.

Pippa’s hair was down and fell over her shoulders. Beneath her jersey dress, her body was easy to imagine, and I reached forward, sliding a hand around her waist to pull her just a little closer. I wanted to kiss her. I knew that in part it was the wine, and the beer, and the heady sense of freedom in a small town where I knew no one, but I also knew that in no part was that feeling about Becky. Pippa bounced against me, singing terribly into the mic—perfect for the song, really. Her earrings cascaded down from her ears, nearly touching her shoulders. Her bracelets clanged on her wrist. Her lipstick stained her lips a seductive fire-red, and it made her happy smile seem boundless.

Aisling tumbled out, his gold eyes going wild about the room to take in all of them. His beak clicked as he worked it in silence. Then, as the breaking of ice may bring a cascade of water from winter’s falls, the griffin’s voice—no longer that small shrill copy of Taryn’s, but his own true voice—poured plaintively from him. “Mom!” Taryn jerked around, her mouth dropping open. Aisling bounded toward her and she swept him up into a tight embrace. He clutched at her shoulders with his talons, burying his head under her chin, and cried, “Mom! Yoo…rrrrr…oh…kay!” “Great gods,” Antilles heard himself say and he shot Tonka a startled glance. “He cannot be speaking?!” The horseman merely smiled. “And why not?” he murmured, resettling himself on his padded bolster. “For has he not been a miracle from the very first?” “You’re talking,” Taryn cried, true delight painting itself over the grief that had seemed to mask her since the dawning of this terrible day. She was radiant once more, burning with a joy and a healing light all its own as she hugged her griffin close. “Oh, my fierce prince! My big boy!” “Yoo…rrrr…Ai-sing,” whispered the griffin. His raptor’s eyes flicked to Antilles and his naked wings fluttered. “Tilly. Yoo…rrrr…sun-shy?” Taryn giggled, her face pressed to fur. “Aye, lad,” Antilles said, tossing his broken horn. “My sun and my moon and all my starry skies.

She wore a dress of white satin, elegant and unusual in its simplicity, with no fussy ruffles and frills to distract from the lovely shape of her figure. Instead of wearing the traditional veil, she had drawn the sides of her hair up to the crown of her head and let the rest cascade down her back in long golden coils. Her only ornamentation was a tiara of graduated diamond stars, which Tom had sent upstairs that morning as a Christmas gift. The wealth of rose-cut gems glittered madly in the candlelight, but they couldn't eclipse her sparkling eyes and radiant face. She looked like a snow queen walking through a winter forest, too beautiful to be entirely human. And there he stood, with his heart in his fist.

The hot water cascaded down his body, and his thoughts again turned to the captivating and mysterious girl who'd fled his house. He hadn't even seen her face without makeup, though he wished he had. Her lips were full, her breasts were beautiful, and her ass was round. And the way she kissed with her delicious mouth had driven Ramón wild. His hand reached down to stroke his throbbing cock. Oh, how he wished it was her delicate fingers wrapped around his length, or better yet, her mouth. Yeah, that was it. He wanted to fuck her mouth. The soft tongue of hers licking his tip, teasing him until he couldn't resist her any longer. Juliet on her knees in front of him, deep throating him. Her eyes locked on his as she took him deeper and deeper.

Lying in a position of classic repose, Winnifred had never been more beautiful. Her silvery gold hair cascaded over the oaken door upon which she lay. A bright waterfall, it pooled on the deep green felt of the billiard table where the door rested. Her sightless blue eyes stared up at the plastered ceiling, her face a study in serenity and peace. I had never seen violent death leave a corpse so lovely.

I think this dress will stun the nobility, and leave them stupefied with envy and lust," Madame Sandrine announced with relish. "I'm just glad it's not crimson, like everything else you drape," Farah said to her husband as she glanced at her transformation in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors across from the raised podium on which she stood. The creation of blue silk evoked the midnight sky, as it wrapped her bosom and waist in bejeweled gathers before cascading from her hips in a dark waterfall. The shamelessly cut bodice was lent a hint of respectability by folds of a shimmering diaphanous silver material draping from a choker of gems about her neck and flowing down her shoulders like moonbeams. To call them sleeves would have been a mistake, for all they concealed. Madame Sandrine threw a teasing look over her shoulder at Blackwell. "How fitting that the color of blood is the one you prefer the most." "Not for her," Dorian rumbled. The seamstress lifted a winged eyebrow, but didn't comment. "Voila. I believe that is all I'll need from you today, Madame Blackwell. I can have these finished in the morning, and in the meantime I have a lovely soft gray frock hemmed with tiny pink blossoms that will bring out the color in your cheeks.

A microscopic egg had failed to divide in time due to a failure somewhere along a chain of chemical events, a tiny disturbance in a cascade of protein reactions. A molecular event ballooned like an exploding universe, out onto the wider scale of human misery. No cruelty, nothing avenged, no ghost moving in mysterious ways. Merely a gene transcribed in error, an enzyme recipe skewed, a chemical bond severed. A process of natural wastage as indifferent as it was pointless. Which only brought into relief healthy, perfectly formed life, equally contingent, equally without purpose. Blind luck, to arrive in the world with your properly formed parts in the right place, to be born to parents who were loving, not cruel, or to escape, by geographical or social accident, war or poverty. And therefore to find it so much easier to be virtuous.

A morning-flowered dalliance demured and dulcet-sweet with ebullience and efflorescence admiring, cozy cottages and elixirs of eloquence lie waiting at our feet - We'll dance through fetching pleasantries as we walk ephemeral roads evocative epiphanies ethereal, though we know our hearts are linked with gossamer halcyon our day a harbinger of pretty things infused with whispers longing still and gamboling in sultry ways to feelings, all ineffable screaming with insouciance masking labyrinthine paths where, in our nonchalance, we walk through the lilt of love’s new morning rays. Mellifluous murmurings from a babbling brook that soothes our heated passion-songs and panoplies perplexed with thought of shadows carried off with clouds in stormy summer rains… My dear, and that I can call you 'dear' after ripples turned to crashing waves after pyrrhic wins, emotions drained we find our palace sunned and rayed with quintessential moments lit with wildflower lanterns arrayed on verandahs lush with mutual love, the softest love – our preferred décor of life's lilly-blossom gate in white-fenced serendipity… Twilight sunlit heavens cross our gardens, graced with perseverance, bliss, and thee, and thou, so splendid, delicate as a morning dove of charm and mirth – at least with me; our misty mornings glide through air... So with whippoorwill’d sweet poetry - of moonstones, triumphs, wonder-woven in chandliers of winglet cherubs wrought with time immemorial, crafted with innocence, stowed away and brought to light upon our day in hallelujah tapestries of ocean-windswept galleries in breaths of ballet kisses, light, skipping to the breakfast room cascading chrysalis's love in diaphanous imaginings delightful, fleeting, celestial-viewed as in our eyes which come to rest evocative, exuberant on one another’s moon-stowed dreams idyllic, in quiescent ways, peaceful in their radiance resplendent with a myriad of thought soothing muse, rhapsodic song until the somnolence of night spreads out again its shaded truss of luminescent fantasies waiting to be loved by us… Oh, love! Your sincerest pardons begged! I’ve gone too long, I’ve rambled, dear, and on and on and on and on - as if our hours were endless here… A morning toast, with orange-juiced lips exalting transcendent minds suffused with sunrise symphonies organic-born tranquilities sublimed sonorous assemblages with scintillas of eternity beating at our breasts – their embraces but a blushing, longing glance away… I’ll end my charms this enraptured morn' before cacophony and chafe coarse in crude and rough abrade when cynical distrust is laid by hoarse and leeching parasites, distaste fraught with smug disgust by hairy, smelly maladroit mediocrities born of poisoned wells grotesque with selfish lies - shrill and shrieking, biting, creeping around our love, as if they rose from Edgar Allen’s own immortal rumpled decomposing clothes… Oh me, oh my! I am so sorry! can you forgive me? I gone and kissed you for so long, in my morning imaginings, through these words, through this song - ‘twas supposed to be "a trifle treat," but little treats do sometimes last a little longer; and, oh, but oh, but if I could, I surly would keep you just a little longer tarrying here, tarrying here with me this pleasant morn

The Everything and Nothing of Money The Legacy Letters By Carew Papritz Summer, and you are the first man and the first woman to kiss. The first to know the exacting, steeling pain of a broken heart. The first to know everything about the whole cascading universe of gods and stars and lunacy and tenderness. Thus you become the first man and woman to know love. And God help you, for you are now the first man and woman in the world.

I love watching stars, counting them on my little finite fingers, those fragments of fire and crumbling dreams. I love to imagine their stories, their pain, their laughter, their love, and then when I feel how they paint dreams even while falling apart, I realise how Love binds this Universe, the sky of these infinite shining souls. I love breaking free into the nothingness of their eyes, as I smile at their gaze when they sing me a lullaby made of a cold glimmer, the cascading fire of Love of His Eternal Smile. I love watching stars kissing away the darkness like a distant breeze, beckoning a song of a wild night clutched in a cold sky, where the music dances in a wedding feast. I love breathing in His forever love through the heart of my stardust, as the infinite soul of my finite soul, caress Him in the contour of that eternal canopy of stars, and how I love watching stars!

Time slipped away in a familiar manner, and love dwindled as it was tossed back and forth in the form of arguments. It could only go away, everything she saw and everywhere she looked. Money. It disappeared from her accounts no matter how hard she tried to save. Time and love and wealth and anything worth building or wrapping one’s arms around, trying to hold on to it all, eroding like the cascade of sand between two palms, stolen by the breeze.

Matthew XV:30” The first bridge, Constitution Station. At my feet the shunting trains trace iron labyrinths. Steam hisses up and up into the night, which becomes at a stroke the night of the Last Judgment. From the unseen horizon and from the very center of my being, an infinite voice pronounced these things— things, not words. This is my feeble translation, time-bound, of what was a single limitless Word: “Stars, bread, libraries of East and West, playing-cards, chessboards, galleries, skylights, cellars, a human body to walk with on the earth, fingernails, growing at nighttime and in death, shadows for forgetting, mirrors busily multiplying, cascades in music, gentlest of all time's shapes. Borders of Brazil, Uruguay, horses and mornings, a bronze weight, a copy of the Grettir Saga, algebra and fire, the charge at Junín in your blood, days more crowded than Balzac, scent of the honeysuckle, love and the imminence of love and intolerable remembering, dreams like buried treasure, generous luck, and memory itself, where a glance can make men dizzy— all this was given to you, and with it the ancient nourishment of heroes— treachery, defeat, humiliation. In vain have oceans been squandered on you, in vain the sun, wonderfully seen through Whitman’s eyes. You have used up the years and they have used up you, and still, and still, you have not written the poem.

I must not hesitate to acknowledge where Europe is great, for great she is without doubt. We cannot help loving her with all our heart, and paying her the best homage of our admiration,—the Europe who, in her literature and art, pours out an inexhaustible cascade of beauty and truth fertilizing all countries and all time; the Europe who, with a mind which is titanic in its untiring power, is sweeping the height and the depth of the universe, winning her homage of knowledge from the infinitely great and the infinitely small, applying all the resources of her great intellect and heart in healing the sick and alleviating those miseries of man which up till now we were contented to accept in a spirit of hopeless resignation; the Europe who is making the earth yield more fruit than seemed possible, coaxing and compelling the great forces of nature into man's service. Such true greatness must have its motive power in spiritual strength.

It is a sort of quasi-monastic diabolical vision. In a landscape populated with larvae - flowing and undulating larvae called forth like a cascade of leeches by tolling bells - three female figures rise up phantasmally, enshrouded with gauze like Spanish madonnas. They are the 'three brides': the bride of Heaven, the bride of the Earth and the bride of Hell... The bride of Hell, with her two serpents writhing about her temples to hold her veil in place, has the most attractive mask: the most profound eyes, the most vertiginous smile that one could ever see. If she existed, how I would love that woman! I feel that if that smile and those eyes were in my life they would be all the cure I need! I could never tire of the study and contemplation of that hallucinatory visage. "The Three Brides" is very peculiar in its detail and composition. It is the whimsy of a dream rendered with astonishing fastidiousness: the delusion of an opium-smoker composed in the style of Holbein.

PATER PROFUNDUS. [Far below]   The chasm at my feet, dark, yawning,   Rests on a chasm deeper still,   A thousand streams, their waters joining,   In a cascade terrific fall;   The tree’s own life, its strength from nature,   Its trunk lifts skywards straight and tall—   All, all, show love’s almighty power   That shapes all things, cares for them all.   The storm breaks round me, fiercely howling,   The woods, ravines, all seem to quake, 12240 And yet, swelled by the deluge falling,   The torrent plunges down the rock   To water lovingly the valley;   The lightning burns the overcast   And clears the air, now smelling freshly,   Of all its foulness, dankness, mist—   All love proclaim! the creating power   By which the whole world is embraced.   Oh kindle, too, in me your fire,   Whose thoughts, disordered, cold, depressed, 12250 Inside the cage of dull sense languish,   Tormented, helpless, hard beset!   Dear God, relieve my spirit’s anguish,   My needy heart illuminate!

In the deep, wet tangled, wild jungle where even natives won't go is a mystical, dangerous river. The river's got no name because naming it would make it real, and no one wanted to believe that river be real. They say you get there only inside a dream-but don't you think of it at bedtime, now, 'cause not everyone who goes there be able to leave! That jungle canopy, it so leafy true daylight can never break in the riverbank, it be wet muck thick with creatures that eat you alive if you stay still too long. To miss that fate, you gots to go into the black water. But the water be heavy as hot tar; once you in, it bind you and pull you along, bit by bit, 'til you come to the end of the land, and then over the water goes in a dark, slow cascade, the highest falls in the history of the world ever. There be demons in that cascading water, and snakes, and wraiths that whisper in your ears. They love you, they say. You should give yourself to them, stay with them, become one of them, they say. 'Isn't it good here?' they say. 'No pain, no trouble.' But also no light and no love and no joy and no ground. You tumble and tumble as you fall, and you try and choose, but your mind be topsy-turvy and maybe you can't think so well, and maybe you can't choose right, and maybe you never wake up. "It felt like that," I tell Tootsie, "even after you got me out and Scott moved me to Highland. I couldn't choose. I couldn't shut out the wraiths...But you would say, 'Hang on, sweetie,' and Scottie would say, 'I miss you, Mama,' and Scott would hold me, just hold me and say nothing at all." Tootsie snorts. "Scott was useless the whole while." "Scott was in the river, too.

I am called, and I personify, the Improbability of Love. I was painted to celebrate the wild cascades of amour, the rollicking, bucking, breaking and transformative passion that inevitably gives way to miserable, constricting, overbearing disappointment. At first my master imbued every tiny brushstroke with unbound ardour, untrammelled desire and unquenchable lust. During the painting of the work he had to accept that his feelings were a mirage, a chimera in his mind. This is the great tragedy of love - even if you are lucky enough to stumble on it, it never lasts.

Her. Her. Her. Future breezes implore me to stay. But I'm no future. I'm no past. Only ever contemporary of this path. I'll sacrifice everything for all her seasons give from losing. She, I sigh from The Mountain top. By her now. My only role. And for that freedom, spread my polar chill, reaching even the warmest times, a warning upon the back of every life that would by harming Hailey's play, ever wayward around this vegetative rush of orbit & twine, awaken among these cascading cliffs of bellicose ice me. And my Vengeance. At once. The Justice of my awful loss set free upon this crowded land. An old terror violent for the glee of ends. But to those who would tend her, harrowed by such Beauty & Fleeting Presence to do more, my cool cries will kiss their gentle foreheads and my tears will kiss their tender cheeks, and then if the Love of their Kindness, which only Kindness ever finds, spills my ear, for a while I might slip down and play amidst her canopies of gold. Solitude. Hailey's bare feet. And all her patience now assumes. Garland of Spring's Sacred Bloom. By you, ever sixteen, this World's preserved. By you, this World has everything left to lose. And I, your sentry of ice, shall allways protect what your Joy so dangerously resumes. I'll destroy no World so long it keeps turning with flurry & gush, petals & stems bending and lush, and allways our hushes returning anew. Everyone betrays the Dream but who cares for it? O Hailey no, I could never walk away from you. - Haloes! Haleskarth! Contraband! I can walk away from anything. Everyone loves the Dream but I kill it. Bald Eagles soar over me: —Reveille Rebel! I jump free this weel. On fire. Blaze a breeze. I'll devastate the World. \\ Samsara! Samarra! Grand! I can walk away from anything. Everyone loves the Dream but I kill it. Atlas Mountain Cedars gush over me: —Up Boogaloo! I leap free this spring. On fire. How my hair curls. I'll destroy the World. - Him. Him. Him. Future winds imploring me to stay. But I'm no tomorrow. I'm no yesterday. Only ever contemporary of this way. I will sacrifice everything for all his seasons miss of soaring. He, I sigh from The Mountain top. By him now. My only role. And for that freedom, spread my polar chill, reaching even the warmest climes, a warning upon the back of every life that would by harming Sam's play, ever wayward around this animal streak of orbit & wind, awaken among these cataracts of belligerent ice me. And my Justice. At once. The Vengeance of my awful loss set free upon this crowded land. An old terror violent for the delirium of ends. But to those who would protect him, frightened by such Beauty & Savage Presence to do more, my cool cries will kiss their tender foreheads and my tears will kiss their gentle cheeks, and then if the Kindness of their Love, which only Loving ever binds, spills my ear, for a while I might slip down and play among his foals so green. My barrenness. Sam's solitude. And all his patience now presumes. Luster of Spring's Sacred Brood. By you, ever sixteen, this World's reserved. By you, this World has everything left to lose. And I, your sentry of ice, shall allways protect what your Joy so terrifyingly elects. I'll destroy no World so long it keeps turning with scurry & blush, fledgling & charms beading with dews, and allways our rush returning renewed. Everyone betrays the Dream but who cares for it? O Sam no, I could never walk away from you.

Anastasia Rossi, born Edith Simmons, sat upright, her bulk filling the chair to its arms. She was dressed in her typical costume for a séance: silk kimono trimmed with cambric, loops of jet beads cascading down her bosom, “Pocahontas” headband with its diadem and ostrich plume. To her right sat Mr. Farnsworth, a tall, bearded man with russet eyebrows, to whom she had made love that morning beneath a rearing stuffed panther, lips (the panther’s) pinned back to show her fearsome teeth. To her left, her thin fingers trembling in Anastasia’s ample palm, was Mrs. Farnsworth, a slight, hysterical woman in a neck-high blouse with bishop sleeves. It was she who had first heard the ghosts that August, and for whose relief the séance was being conducted

It was impossible not to stare at each of them, not only because my encounters with the courtly fae are so rare I could count them on one hand, but because they were more lovely and more disturbing than any faerie I had set eyes on before. The Ljosland Folk had seemed shaped from the harsh landscape of their home, a pattern that seemed to extend to the courtly fae of this realm. The memory blurs, much as I try to pin it like a butterfly in a display case. The best I can do is record the impressions I've retained: a woman with her hair a cascade of wild roses; a man with tiny leaves dotting his face, like freckles. Several faeries with their skin faintly patterned with whorls, like tree rings, or in the variegated shades of bark. Another woman who flashed silver-blue in the sun, as if she were not made of flesh and blood but a collection of ripples.

Dan was the first to speak, his words blurred by the roar of the cascading water. “Pools,” he said. “What about the pools?” “Poos?” Amy said. “What poos?” Atticus asked. “Bird poos? It’s called guano. Actually, it’s pretty interesting how many different words there are for animal poos. Guano, dung, droppings, spoors, cow pies, buffalo chips . . . One of my favorites is fewmets.” Dan said, “But I didn’t —” “Fewmets — that’s from medieval times, the poo you find when an animal is being hunted on a quest.” Atticus was on a roll again. “And did you know that otter poo is called spraints?” “Why do otters get their own word for poo?” Jake wondered. “I love otters, they’re so playful,” Amy said. “Spraints — what a funny word.” “Enough with the poos!” Dan yelled. Then he looked at Atticus. “I mean, it’s cool — especially about the spraints, I didn’t know that before — but I didn’t say poos.

She wraps her legs around my waist, and I walk us slowly down the hall. "Mmm, wait," she whines against my mouth. "I haven't showered. I'm so gross, and I don't..." She trails off as I turn into my bathroom, then set her down. She shuffles her bare feet against the gray stone tile, an inquisitive look on her face as she looks around the narrow space bathed in neutral hues. I push open the glass door and turn on the shower. Water cascades from the waterfall showered. "Oh," she says as she grins and bites her bottom lip. By the time we've helped each other out of our clothes, the water's warm. I help her in first, then step in. And then, under the hot stream of water, we resume our dirty kissing and grabbing. "Wait, wait." She presses a hand against my chest, then reaches for the shampoo bottle on the ledge. "I do need to get clean first." I laugh and follow her lead by shampooing my own hair and doing a quick rinse with body wash. She holds her hand out for the loofah, but I shake my head. "Let me?" A devilish smirk tugs at her perfect mouth. When she nods and licks her lips, I have to take a second. God, this woman. The way she's sweet and filthy all at once is enough to make me lose it right here. But I refuse. Not before she gets what I'm dying to give her. I work up a lather and run the loofah all over her body. I take my time, paying attention to every part of her. These beautifully curved hips, the fullness of her thighs, the gentle curve of her waist, her arms, her hands, the swell of her boobs. And then I lather up my hands and slowly work between her legs. She clutches both hands around my biceps, and her toes curl against the earthen-hued river rock that lines the shower floor. Her eyes go wide and pleading as she looks up at me. I lean down to kiss her. "Tell me what you want." "You. Just you. Please." With her breathy request, I'm ready to burst. Not yet, though. She reaches down to palm me, but I gently push her hand away. I want this to be one hundred percent about her. When she presses her mouth against my shoulder and her sounds go louder and more frantic, I work my hand faster. She's panting, pleading, shouting. When I feel the sting of her teeth against my skin, I grin. Fuck yeah, my girl is rough when she loses it and I love it. I love her. She explodes against my palm, the weight of her body shuddering against me. I've got her, though. I've always, always got you. When she starts to ease back down, she lets out a breathy laugh. "Oh my god." I nod down at her, which only makes her laugh harder. Then she glances down at what I'm sporting between my legs and flashes a naughty smirk. "Let's do something about that." Soon it's me at the mercy of her hands. My head spins at the pleasure she delivers so confidently, like she knows every single one of my buttons to push. When I lose it, I'm shuddering and grunting. For a few seconds, my vision's blurry. She's that incredible.

The sexual liberation revolution of the 1960's set in motion a cascade effect: the reversal of the long-standing moral consensus around promiscuity (which separated sex from marriage) worked in tandem with the advent of birth control and the legalization of abortion (which separated sex from pro-creation), which moved to the legalization of no-fault divorce (which turned a covenant into a contract and separated sex from intimacy and fidelity), then to tinder and hookup culture (which separated sex from romance and turned it into a way to "get your needs met"), From there it's moved on to the LGBTQI+ revolution (which separated sex from the male-female binary), the current transgender wave (which is an attempt to separate gender from biological sex), and the nascent polyamory movement (an attempt to move beyond two-person relationships). Amid the revolution, the questions nobody seems to even be asking are, is this making us better people? More loving people? Or even happier people? Are we thriving in a way we weren't prior to "liberation"?

The candy-colored pavillions and exhibit halls, fitted out with Saturn rings, lightning bolts, shark's fins, golden grilles and honeycombs, the Italian pavillion with its entire facade dissolving in a perpetual cascade of water, the gigantic cash register, the austere and sinuous temples of the Detroit gods, the fountains, the pylons and sundials, the statues of George Washington and Freedom of Speech and Truth Showing the Way to Freedom had been peeled, stripped, prized apart, knocked down, bulldozed into piles, loaded onto truck beds, dumped into barges, towed out past the mouth of the harbor, and sent to the bottom of the sea. It made him sad, not because he saw some instructive allegory or harsh sermon on the vanity of all human hopes and Utopian imaginings in this translation of a bright summer dream into an immense mud puddle freezing over at the end of a September afternoon - he was too young to have such inklings - but because he had so loved the Fair, and seeing it this way, he felt in his heart what he had known all along, that, like childhood, the Fair was over, and he would never be able to visit again.

Another star crossed the sky, twirling and twisting over itself, as if it were reveling in its own sparkling beauty. It was chased by another, and another, until a brigade of them were unleashed from the edge of the horizon, like a thousand archers had loosed them from mighty bows. The stars cascaded over us, filling the world with white and blue light. They were like living fireworks, and my breath lodged in my throat as the stars kept on falling and falling. I’d never seen anything so beautiful. And when the sky was full with them, when the stars raced and danced and flowed across the world, the music began. Wherever they were, people began dancing, swaying and twirling, some grabbing hands and spinning, spinning, spinning to the drums, the strings, the glittering harps. Not like the grinding and thrusting of the Court of Nightmares, but—joyous, peaceful dancing. For the love of sound and movement and life. I lingered with Rhysand at the edge of it, caught between watching the people dancing on the patio, hands upraised, and the stars streaming past, closer and closer until I swore I could have touched them if I’d leaned out.

There was nothing in Nesta's head but screaming. Nothing in her heart but love and hatred and fury as she let go of everything inside her and the entire world exploded. The baying of her magic was a beast with no name. Avalanches cascaded down the cliffs in seas of glittering white. Trees bent and ruptured in the wake of the power that shattered from her. Distant seas drew back from their shores, then raced in waves toward them again. Glasses shook and shattered in Velaris, books tumbled off the shelves in Helion's thousand libraries, and the remnants of a run-down cottage in the human lands crumbled into a pile of rubble. But all Nesta saw was Briallyn. All she saw was the slack-jawed crone as Nesta leaped upon her, throwing her frail body to the rocky ground. All she knew was screaming as she clutched Briallyn's face, the Crown glowing blindingly white, and roared her fury to the mountains, to the stars, to the dark places between them. Gnarled hands turned young. A lined face became beautiful and lovely. White hair darkened to raven black. But Nesta bellowed and bellowed, letting her magic rage, unleashing every ember. Erasing the queen beneath her from existence. The young hands turned to ash. The pretty face dissolved into nothing. The dark hair withered into dust. Until all that was left of the queen was the Crown on the ground.

I am sitting alone in my old English classroom at my old desk, reading from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The only sounds in the room are the ticking of the clock and the occasional rustling of the pages of the book. Then, Martina Reynaud, the most beautiful girl in the Class of ’83, walks in. She’s tall, graceful, and absolutely breathtaking. She’s wearing a black dress, one that shows off her long dancer’s legs. Her peaches-and-cream complexion is flawless; there is no sign of a pimple anywhere. Her long chestnut hair cascades down over her shoulders. In short, she is the personification of feminine elegance from the top of her head to her high-heeled shoes. I try to get back to my reading assignment, but the scent of her perfume, a mixture of jasmine and orange blossoms, is beguiling. I look to my right; she is sitting at the desk right next to mine. She gives me a smile. My heart skips a beat. I know guys who would kill for one of Marty’s smiles. She has that effect on most men. Her smile is full of genuine warmth and affection; I can tell by the look in her hazel eyes. “Hi, Jimmy,” she says. Her voice is soft and melodious; she speaks with a lilting British accent. From what I’ve heard, her family is from England. London, actually. “Hi,” I reply, feeling about as articulate as your average mango. Then, mustering my last reserves of willpower, I focus my attention on Shakespeare’s play.

Legs? Check. I am five foot seven, after all. They’re slender but not too skinny. I run every morning, so my legs have always been slightly muscled, but in a feminine way — at least I hope they look feminine; bulky is not a word I’d want someone to use. I think the not too short, but short enough to still be very stylish, pleated and thickly cuffed navy blue shorts show my legs off nicely. My cork and white wedges with a cute little bow at each ankle are the perfect finishing touch. A simple dove-gray ribbed tank completes the outfit and hugs my curves. Maybe there is something to Mel’s theory after all.  My golden-blonde hair is sun-kissed in the summer, and its soft waves cascade to the middle of my back. I usually have it up, but tonight Melanie insisted that I leave it down and wavy. I let her play Barbie, and I can’t say I hate it. The real show-stopper, though, is my eyes. They’re a bright, vibrant green. They look almost fake, but as I lean into the mirror to get a closer look, I catch small little flecks of gold around the outside that I know no contact lens could replicate. I have always loved my eyes. I have my mother’s eyes. I’ve seen them in the few pictures I have from my childhood. Even if my eyes were the murkiest, dingiest, dullest brown, I still would have loved them, as long as they were my mother’s. It’s really the only thing I have left of her.  I gave in on the hair and let Melanie have a field day, but I insisted on keeping my makeup simple — a soft pale pink blush, clear lip gloss, and a light dusting of gold eye shadow is all I need. A quick swipe of some mascara, and the look is complete.

The assassination of President Kennedy killed not only a man but a complex of illusions. It demolished the myth that hate and violence can be confined in an airtight chamber to be employed against but a few. Suddenly the truth was revealed that hate is a contagion; that it grows and spreads as a disease; that no society is so healthy that it can automatically maintain its immunity. If a smallpox epidemic had been raging in the South, President Kennedy would have been urged to avoid the area. There was a plague afflicting the South, but its perils were not perceived. Negroes tragically know political assassination well. In the life of Negro civil-rights leaders, the whine of the bullet from ambush, the roar of the bomb have all too often broken the night's silence. They have replaced lynching as a political weapon. More than a decade ago, sudden death came to Mr. and Mrs. Harry T. Moore, N.A.A.C.P. leaders in Florida. The Reverend George Lee of Belzoni, Mississippi, was shot to death on the steps of a rural courthouse. The bombings multiplied. Nineteen sixty-three was a year of assassinations. Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi; William Moore in Alabama; six Negro children in Birmingham—and who could doubt that these too were political assassinations? The unforgivable default of our society has been its failure to apprehend the assassins. It is a harsh judgment, but undeniably true, that the cause of the indifference was the identity of the victims. Nearly all were Negroes. And so the plague spread until it claimed the most eminent American, a warmly loved and respected president. The words of Jesus "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me" were more than a figurative expression; they were a literal prophecy. We were all involved in the death of John Kennedy. We tolerated hate; we tolerated the sick stimulation of violence in all walks of life; and we tolerated the differential application of law, which said that a man’s life was sacred only if we agreed with his views. This may explain the cascading grief that flooded the country in late November. We mourned a man who had become the pride of the nation, but we grieved as well for ourselves because we knew we were sick.

Chatting to the gossip of flames waking from the slumber of our flesh-drunk night together— it’s only when I step out to pee do I notice— how far, burgundy-dark, the moon has risen…. On four paws the shepherd- dogs bound, lightly though the trees they hardly touch on earth— we saw it from far sunk here in an always-ache…. Dyeing paling twilight woods— a pair of wasps, spiraling, writhe…. Wetted lips of hers and mine, just-parted, move over each other with tongues just-coming but refuse— like mists of evening they've no place to settle…. Just-here though she's singing she’s in some song from long ago— poised on the brink of twilight longing three thousand miles rush through my heart…. Under undulating curtains— I hover above her the tips of me brushing the tips of her— breathing back and forth a column of air we share our breath slowly asphyxiating…. From burning wood campfire sparks dart off extinguishing in the wet blue dark… how you blow your long wind across my embers, through my soul, she pleads me, take away the pain— I dip a branch in blue water and plunge it into coals…. *** In pre-dawn dark, against a leaping inferno of flames black monolith of wood in the cast iron compartment softens, and—gradually— fractures to cells, warping upward, until from the top a shard splinters: pearls of flame string a fiber and leap in little tongues while the log, glowing, engulfed, is consumed by the inferno contained…. A shadow daunts me, haunts and taunts me now reaching far, now recoiling, now growing bold…. I once sang eruptions and the wind— then appeared you it took my whole life singing only the songs of you and still I sing for you what other refuge can stay me from this torment? So— my doppelganger has arrived no one said it would happen this way but the way his hands fold like mine, the style of his humor, broadness of his smile— even the way he walks…. Licking and lapping these lashings of grasses are in tongues at my feet smoldering's the fury within me— I have seen my fields of daylight warp to noxious-air infernos but still to the clean blue of the flame I take rest in her breast…. His songs I mouth, and in my head is his voice— I cannot hear my own…. in my mind I see myself— thin, stupid— my arms too weak, my own chest too frail— and besides I prefer him more…. Along spiral lines, seed-heads decay— swept away they whirl and writhe in the hot blue fire of evening…. Stuck in a mural of sticky flesh— the family… I am locked-in-arms with brothers and sisters, drooping at the thighs with nieces and nephews, grafted to parents at the scalp, and pasted with toddlers all over… hived, sapped, black I sit, subject to the flavors and aromas of your abuse…. Then— be wrapped in his presence… crescendo to his warmth the cascade of your laughter search in his wrinkles for the boy inside him… I’m just biding here, bragless, trying to admit these rival-streams that flow in one latticework of blood…. Halves of flesh and bosomy hips, lips like dark ripe fruits they're chasing— I chased them… full-feathered was their hair like floss in the sunshine fine-fingered was their style like laces cut to curves: and then there was you, returning one, just there like the midnight moon in my sky at noontime….

to look at Louisa, stroked her cheek, and was rewarded by a dazzling smile. She had been surprised by how light-skinned the child was. Her features were much more like Eva’s than Bill’s. A small turned-up nose, big hazel eyes, and long dark eyelashes. Her golden-brown hair protruded from under the deep peak of her bonnet in a cascade of ringlets. “Do you think she’d come to me?” Cathy asked. “You can try.” Eva handed her over. “She’s got so heavy, she’s making my arms ache!” She gave a nervous laugh as she took the parcel from Cathy and peered at the postmark. “What’s that, Mam?” David craned his neck and gave a short rasping cough. “Is it sweets?” “No, my love.” Eva and Cathy exchanged glances. “It’s just something Auntie Cathy’s brought from the old house. Are you going to show Mikey your flags?” The boy dug eagerly in his pocket, and before long he and Michael were walking ahead, deep in conversation about the paper flags Eva had bought for them to decorate sand castles. Louisa didn’t cry when Eva handed her over. She seemed fascinated by Cathy’s hair, and as they walked along, Cathy amused her by singing “Old MacDonald.” The beach was only a short walk from the station, and it wasn’t long before the boys were filling their buckets with sand. “I hardly dare open it,” Eva said, fingering the string on the parcel. “I know. I was desperate to open it myself.” Cathy looked at her. “I hope you haven’t built up your hopes, too much, Eva. I’m so worried it might be . . . you know.” Eva nodded quickly. “I thought of that too.” She untied the string, her fingers trembling. The paper fell away to reveal a box with the words “Benson’s Baby Wear” written across it in gold italic script. Eva lifted the lid. Inside was an exquisite pink lace dress with matching bootees and a hat. The label said, “Age 2–3 Years.” Beneath it was a handwritten note:   Dear Eva, This is a little something for our baby girl from her daddy. I don’t know the exact date of her birthday, but I wanted you to know that I haven’t forgotten. I hope things are going well for you and your husband. Please thank him from me for what he’s doing for our daughter: he’s a fine man and I don’t blame you for wanting to start over with him. I’m back in the army now, traveling around. I’m due to be posted overseas soon, but I don’t know where yet. I’ll write and let you know when I get my new address. It would be terrific if I could have a photograph of her in this little dress, if your husband doesn’t mind. Best wishes to you all, Bill   For several seconds they sat staring at the piece of paper. When Eva spoke, her voice was tight with emotion. “Cathy, he thinks I chose to stay with Eddie!” Cathy nodded, her mind reeling. “Eddie showed me the letter he sent. Bill wouldn’t have known you were in Wales, would he? He would have assumed you and Eddie had already been reunited—that he’d written with your consent on behalf of you both.” She was afraid to look at Eva. “What are you going to do?” Eva’s face had gone very pale. “I don’t know.” She glanced at David, who was jabbing a Welsh flag into a sand castle. “He said he was going to be posted overseas. Suppose they send him to Britain?” Cathy bit her lip. “It could be anywhere, couldn’t it? It could be the other side of the world.” She could see what was going through Eva’s mind. “You think if he came here, you and he could be together without . . .” Her eyes went to the boys. Eva gave a quick, almost imperceptible nod, as if she was afraid someone might see her. “What about Eddie?” “I don’t know!” The tone of her voice made David look up. She put on a smile, which disappeared the

I couldn't pick just one. The moment I'd touched the sugar packet, a thousand thoughts cascaded through my mind. I want to go shopping in Times Square. I want to go to the top of the Empire State Building. I want Dad to finish his meetings and come see the city with me. I want to travel to Paris. I want to fall in love so hard it makes me cry. I want... I shook my head. Sam didn't know what he was asking. How could this small pink square of processed sugar be transformed into my heart's desire? I want Mom to come home.

There is a sweet bond between us, all the thoughts our eyes express. Tales our love cherishes.. You are my destination in love, my beloved... Like a raindrop caressing my mind Like a cascading flood in my heart Aren’t you this illusion? You have me feeling swooned, you reach me like a storm’ lost in your love my beloved... Your love hit me Once, it’s the serene smile my beloved... You fill me up, show yourself

Suffering, loving, and exhibiting compassion along with witnessing the tragic beauty and glory of a passionate life filled with birth and death, comedy and tragedy, all serve to give direction to our subterranean voice of decency and dignity, which effuses naturally from a cascade of affection for humankind.

Love is stillness quaked only by the leaves' cascading pirouettes.

I had a great many adventures on my trip." She glanced back at him, her eyelashes fluttering in womanly enticement. "You'd be astonished to hear them all." How did she do that? Beckon him with a glance, ensuring that he would trail after her like a lovesick swain? Two days ago she'd scarcely had the courage to look him in the eyes. A few kisses- a few very good kisses- and she was flirting. She added, "Someday I'll tell you... if you ask nicely." A cascade of climbing roses blossomed on trellises they passed, and she stopped and, with tender fingers, lifted a blossom. She smiled down at the furling petals, then, closing her eyes, she sniffed it deeply. "I love roses, especially yellow roses. They're not cherished like red roses, but they're invariably cheerful. Add them to a bouquet of lavender, and they make a heavenly smell and a beautiful display. Put them in a vase by themselves, and they nod and smile at everyone who passes.

when subjects focus in the heart area and activate a core heart feeling such as love, appreciation, or care, this focus immediately shifts their heart rhythms. When the rhythms become more coherent, a cascade of neural and biochemical events begins that affects virtually every organ in the body.

Time changes, people change. But memories last forever and moments never fade. They stay deep in my heart, imbibed in my soul and run through my mind in a lovely cascade.

Molly dove onto the floor with the dish towel, crawling awkwardly with her bustle bouncing above her. Bailey met her midway under the table. “It was only a wink,” he whispered. “No reason to drench me.” Molly tilted her head up, inches from his face. Why, oh why, did her heart have to beat like a hummingbird’s wings? Why couldn’t her anger prevent the fluttering in her stomach? Fluttering or no, his unsettling smile must be dispelled. Lifting the saturated dish towel over his head, she squeezed it, sending a cascade of dirty tea rolling down his face. “I have every reason to drench you,” she cooed and willed the butterflies to calm before she rose to help her shocked hostess.

you know that pool of water at the bottom the cascade? deep, cool blue, and constantly refreshed, i sink down into it, i want to stay forever in this water

Find every edge and use every trick to make the path of least resistance the one that brings long term fulfillment. Make decisions now that your future self will be likely to follow. It’s a cascade. The better you stack the deck now, the better hand you future self will get to play.

She’s like poetry. Like prose and love letters and lyrics, cascading down the center of a page.

Next stop: the cake. The couple had ordered theirs through one of Alfie's hotel pastry chefs, and it was three tiers of buttercream-frosted flowers that cascaded down all sides. One thing Cedric taught his planners was to consider where a wedding would take place and what was most appropriate for that setting---especially when it came to the cake. For example, if the couple wanted their wedding cake displayed at an outsider reception, they were limited to the type of frosting since many varieties melted in warm temperatures. Obviously, ice cream cakes were almost always out of the question, not only because they melted but also because they should only appear at toddler's parties, as Cedric was quick to say. Meanwhile fondant, while gorgeous, wasn't always the tastiest but could withstand a nuclear attack. We gave Camila and Alfie the gentler version of this spiel, but they insisted on savory buttercream regardless---and agreed to leave the cake inside on the big day. I had doubts about how much the bride actually loved cake anyway, given that she looked as if she maybe one piece of lettuce a day. But, "A wedding without a cake isn't really a wedding"---another one of Cedric's truisms, this one inspired by the Candy Bar Craze of 2009 and the Great Doughnuts of 2013.

Your and my corner! Not in any corner, And at all not there, But in our own corner, Where light bends and shadows play, just there, Let us romance, Feel the feelings of love, Just in that corner known as the corner of romance, Let us take our chances and kiss and love, Our corner, just your and my corner, Where time knowingly does not venture, Let me embrace you behind the shadows of light in that corner, Where you with me and I with you always venture, Where time is your kiss of eternity, And the space is the feeling of your beauty, Let me dive into this eternity, And float along with your waves of passions and endless beauty, There my love Irma, let us create our corner, Where light bends, shadows play and your smile always greets me, Let me discover your wonder in that secret corner, And let your beauty seep into me, Then whenever we visit this secret corner, It shall always be you and me, To create a cascading relay of corners, one corner followed by another corner, But in all, you and me, forever just you and me!

The sensuality of her grief, thawing. Her power coming into focus, still so chaotic inside her. I love the way she splurged on this hedonistic indulgence: a public cascade of tears. Not sobbing, not beaten, just allowing the ocean inside to surge and be visible, palpable, wet.

The idea of Self exists in a dynamic equilibrium of Self. You experience Self as a reflection of Self, cascading through a near-infinite electromagnetic array. Here, the electromagnetic field takes on #GLASSBEADPLAY.

Her throat interested him greatly, the lovely arc beneath her dainty earlobe, the milky skin, the silken cascade of her perfumed hair... His mind drifted, the wine warming his senses. It had now been three days since he'd had a woman, and he had not forgotten the way she had felt beneath him last night. He still wanted her in spite of himself. Her lips' dewy roses beguiled him, along with the teasing sparkle in those emerald green eyes beneath her black velvet lashes. The candlelight brought out a golden luster in the depths of her light brown hair and danced along the delicate lines of her bare shoulders. Was it wrong to want to lick the caramel sauce out of her splendid cleavage instead of drizzling it politely on the cheesecake? He did his best to keep a tight rein on his dangerous hunger for her, even as his hands tingled with yearning to caress all her creamy, glowing skin. As he took another large swallow of port, he contemplated the fact that there was one sure way to find out if she was really as innocent as she would have him believe. If she was a part of her forebears' sinister conspiracy, it was unlikely that she was a virgin. He was keenly tempted to verify her status for himself by luring her into his bed and finishing what they had started last night.

Her saturated eyes cascaded a deep, crystal, cerulean shade on glinting energy.

Her saturated eyes cascaded a deep, crystal, cerulean shade of glinting energy.

The mighty rush of water from Kandake Falls gracefully and beautifully cascaded down the rocks into a plunge pool below. The frothy mist created from the water hitting the deep blue plunge pool produced the perfect double rainbow. We could see the entire arch of both magnificent rainbows.

this hope is not a disappointing fantasy,d because we can now experience the endless love of God cascading into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who lives in us!e

Forget morality tales and all the fury and mire of human complexity, and follow the money. It will lead you through urban legends about sex and revenge and jealousy and the acquisition of power over others, but ultimately, it will lead you to the issue from which all the other motivations derive—money, piles of it, green and lovely and cascading like leaves out of a beneficent sky, money and money and money, the one item that human beings will go to any lengths to acquire.

The Unbidden An unbidden grace seizes me, compelling me to be what I know I ought to be. To let it in I know I must let go. This is the grace of aspiration, The gravitas of one hundred New Year’s resolutions, with peaks of love, death and transience jagged as the Teton’s crown. With a nervous laughter I imagine it as the frazzled smile on a cartoon character. There is altitude in grace; I’m anointed sherpa of my landscape. Fumeroles of memory erupt through my soul, pointing to a underground river of propinquity. Time and space fuse, the desperation of the disparate is vanquished. In the mindscape of grace, everything flows in two directions. Memories ripple forward and are joined by new events cascading backwards. My sherpa calls this swirling cauldron life, the manufacturer of all meaning. Without the epiphany of the unbidden, we are without compass and forever lost.

The woman was tall, wearing stretch leggings and a big red bulky sweater. Even though it was thick, it left no doubt that she filled it out a lot better than I filled out mine. Dolly Parton to my . . . well, let’s just say that the greatly endowed wagon had passed me by. Her blonde hair was cascading in glorious waves around her shoulders instead of hanging in tight curls like mine. She no doubt knew her way around a curling iron. She was resting a hand on Aunt Sue’s shoulders like they were the very best of friends. I couldn’t explain it, but I took an immediate dislike to her. Probably because Brad couldn’t take his eyes off her and was starting to drool. “Hey, everyone, this is Cynthia,” Aunt Sue announced, like we should all care when I definitely did not. “She’s staying at the condo next to yours. This is my niece, Kate, my nephew, Sam, and their friends.” “It’s great to meet you all,” Cynthia said a little too breathlessly, her voice having a little squeal to it, like she was trying really hard to sound sexy but she just came across sounding like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.

Truth is more than trustable knowledge; it is deeply experiential, confessional, and contextual. It should be engaged in a community that he or she lives, embodied in a world beyond the immediate community, and testified at all costs because of the love of God for all. Truth is not possessive, but requires a life that engages the way, the truth and the life as we get clues from John 14:6.” -- Yung Suk Kim, Truth, Testimony, and Transformation: A New Reading of the "I am" Sayings in the Fourth Gospel (Cascade Books, 2013 forthcoming)

Their house sat on a cascading hilltop looking down over the river. Kane loved the view, but no matter how Avery argued, Kane refused to move into the house until they were officially married. It made no sense and became the one thing they always argued over. They had lived together virtually from the beginning and still stayed together in the apartment close to the restaurant.