Earring Sayings And Quotes

You're so calm and quiet, you never say. But there are things inside you. I see them sometimes, hiding in your eyes.

Spiritual but not religious,” Zachary clarifies. He doesn’t say what he is thinking, which is that his church is held-breath story listening and late-night-concert ear-ringing rapture and perfect-boss fight-button pressing. That his religion is buried in the silence of freshly fallen snow, in a carefully crafted cocktail, in between the pages of a book somewhere after the beginning but before the ending.

Hopefully as you get older, you start to learn how to live with your demon. It’s hard at first. Some people give their demon so much room that there is no space in their head or bed for love. They feed their demon and it gets really strong and then it makes them stay in abusive relationships or starve their beautiful bodies. But sometimes, you get a little older and get a little bored of the demon. Through good therapy and friends and self-love you can practice treating the demon like a hacky, annoying cousin. Maybe a day even comes when you are getting dressed for a fancy event and it whispers, “You aren’t pretty,” and you go, “I know, I know, now let me find my earrings.” Sometimes you say, “Demon, I promise you I will let you remind me of my ugliness, but right now I am having hot sex so I will check in later.

As I shut the door and started to walk away, I heard him say, "Hey. Sydney." "Yeah?" "You had on a shirt with mushrooms on it, and your hair was pulled back. Silver earrings. Pepperoni slice. No lollipop." I just looked at him, confused. Layla was walking toward us now. "The first time you came into Seaside," he said. "You weren't invisible, not to me. Just so you know.

People say the truth hurts. Hell no, it hurts even more if you do a whole bunch of foolishness to try and avoid it.

Please, Orma, I’ve already gotten you in so much trouble—” “That I can’t possibly get into more. Take it.” He wouldn’t stop glaring at me until I’d put the earring back on its cord. “You are all that’s left of Linn. Her own people won’t even say her name. I—I value your continued existence.” I could not speak; he had pierced me to my very heart.

You look... amazing!" And I have to say, I agree. I'm wearing all black - but expensive black. The kind of deep, soft black that you fall into. A simple sleeveless dress from Whistles, the highest of Jimmy Choos, a pair of stunning uncut amethyst earrings. And please don't ask how much it all cost, because that's irrelevant. This is investment shopping. The biggest investment of my life. I haven't eaten anything all day so I'm nice and thin and for once my hair has fallen perfectly into shape. I look... well, I've never looked better in my life. But of course, looks are only part of the package, aren't they?

I'd been making desicions for days. I picked out the dress Bailey would wear forever- a black slinky one- innapropriate- that she loved. I chose a sweater to go over it, earrings, bracelet, necklace, her most beloved strappy sandals. I collected her makeup to give to the funeral director with a recent photo- I thought it would be me that would dress her; I didn't think a strange man should see her naked touch her body shave her legs apply her lipstick but that's what happened all the same. I helped Gram pick out the casket, the plot at the cemetery. I changed a few lines in the obituary that Big composed. I wrote on a piece of paper what I thought should go on the headstone. I did all this without uttering a word. Not one word, for days, until I saw Bailey before the funeral and lost my mind. I hadn't realized that when people say so-and-so snapped that's what actually happens- I started shaking her- I thought I could wake her up and get her the hell out of that box. When she didn't wake, I screamed: Talk to me. Big swooped me up in his arms, carried me out of the room, the church, into the slamming rain, and down to the creek where we sobbed together under the black coat he held over our heads to protect us from the weather.

So that night after Wyatt goes to bed, I can't sleep. And I see this piece of paper with this song he's writing and it's clearly about me. It says something about a redhead and mentioned the hoop earrings that I was wearing all the time. And then he had this chorous about me having a big heart but no love in it. I kept looking at the words, thinking, This isn't right. He didn't understand me at all. So I thought about it for a little while and got out a pen and paper. I wrote some things down. When he woke up, I said, "Your chorus should be more like 'Big eyes, big soul/big heart, no control/but all she got to give is tiny love.'" Wyatt grabbed a pen and paper and he said, "Say that again?" I said, "It was just an example. Write your own goddamn song." Simone: "Tiny Love"was the Breeze's biggest hit. And Wyatt pretended he wrote the whole thing.

Pirates?' Lara gasped. 'But we're not at sea. How can they be pirates?' Weren't pirates supposed to wear eye-patches, feather earrings and lots of black eye-liner, and say 'arrrrr' a lot? Or was that just Johnny Depp? Lara was confused.

I smoked while they compared booty. Things they took … nail polish, perfume, toilet paper. Things they were given … one-earrings, twenty hangers, torn bras. (Advice to cleaning women: Take everything that your lady gives you and say Thank you. You can leave it on the bus, in the crack.)

A dam inside my own heart opened up, and the feelings of heaviness and unease lifted like wind against the winter sky. I loved him. I loved his slow wit and his gruff demeanor and his tender disposition. I loved his endless empathy and his world-weary cynicism and his innocence. I loved that he was a walking, breathing paradox. I loved his lank hair and his iron earring and the tooth missing at the back of his mouth. I loved the way he laughed, music incomparable to any song, and the way he smiled, like you could see the child in him and the animal in him and the man in him all at once. I loved that he listened to crappy music, the kind that made me want to put my head through a wall, and I loved the charcoal stains on his knuckles and the pencils he tucked behind his ears. I loved that he told me to shut up as though I could actually say anything. I loved that he made me feel as though I could. I loved his short fingers and his rough palms and his long legs and his flat belly. I loved that he liked to read Kerouac but didn't know how to pronounce Kerouac. I loved his brown skin and his blue tattoos and his tempestuous blue eyes. I loved that he loved the land. I loved him. I loved him. Oh, God. I loved him.

You have to marry me. I think I've just been voted off the committee on international trade-they think I'm unstable. And Tony took me off his lift. Mary says she'll quit if I don't bring you back. Ericka found your earrings, and she gave them to Jim. He said to tell you that you can't have them unless you come back for them...

Oh, no, thanks, though. I’m agnostopagan.” The Keeper cocks his head questioningly. “Spiritual but not religious,” Zachary clarifies. He doesn’t say what he is thinking, which is that his church is held-breath story listening and late-night-concert ear-ringing rapture and perfect-boss fight-button pressing. That his religion is buried in the silence of freshly fallen snow, in a carefully crafted cocktail, in between the pages of a book somewhere after the beginning but before the ending.

When she says margarita she means daiquiri. When she says quixotic she means mercurial. And when she says, "I'll never speak to you again," she means, "Put your arms around me from behind as I stand disconsolate at the window." He's supposed to know that. When a man loves a woman he is in New York and she is in Virginia or he is in Boston, writing, and she is in New York, reading, or she is wearing a sweater and sunglasses in Balboa Park and he is raking leaves in Ithaca or he is driving to East Hampton and she is standing disconsolate at the window overlooking the bay where a regatta of many-colored sails is going on while he is stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway. When a woman loves a man it is one ten in the morning she is asleep he is watching the ball scores and eating pretzels drinking lemonade and two hours later he wakes up and staggers into bed where she remains asleep and very warm. When she says tomorrow she means in three or four weeks. When she says, "We're talking about me now," he stops talking. Her best friend comes over and says, "Did somebody die?" When a woman loves a man, they have gone to swim naked in the stream on a glorious July day with the sound of the waterfall like a chuckle of water rushing over smooth rocks, and there is nothing alien in the universe. Ripe apples fall about them. What else can they do but eat? When he says, "Ours is a transitional era," "that's very original of you," she replies, dry as the martini he is sipping. They fight all the time It's fun What do I owe you? Let's start with an apology Ok, I'm sorry, you dickhead. A sign is held up saying "Laughter." It's a silent picture. "I've been fucked without a kiss," she says, "and you can quote me on that," which sounds great in an English accent. One year they broke up seven times and threatened to do it another nine times. When a woman loves a man, she wants him to meet her at the airport in a foreign country with a jeep. When a man loves a woman he's there. He doesn't complain that she's two hours late and there's nothing in the refrigerator. When a woman loves a man, she wants to stay awake. She's like a child crying at nightfall because she didn't want the day to end. When a man loves a woman, he watches her sleep, thinking: as midnight to the moon is sleep to the beloved. A thousand fireflies wink at him. The frogs sound like the string section of the orchestra warming up. The stars dangle down like earrings the shape of grapes.

go buy a cup of coffee and say “Nice day” to the barista. Compliment the lunch lady’s earrings. Reassure your brain that the world is a safe, sane place, and not all people suck. It helps!

Clear night, thumb-top of a moon, a back-lit sky. Moon-fingers lay down their same routine On the side deck and the threshold, the white keys and the black keys. Bird hush and bird song. A cassia flower falls. I want to be bruised by God. I want to be strung up in a strong light and singled out. I want to be stretched, like music wrung from a dropped seed. I want to be entered and picked clean. And the wind says “What?” to me. And the castor beans, with their little earrings of death, say “What?” to me. And the stars start out on their cold slide through the dark. And the gears notch and the engines wheel.

George Burns tells a wonderful story about the one time in his life (so he says) he cheated on his beloved Gracie. He was so disgusted and ashamed of himself that he went out and bought her the most beautiful diamond necklace he could find. Gracie was pretty sure she knew what was wrong, but she accepted the necklace and said nothing. Several years passed. One night, she and George were out to dinner and an acquaintance complimented her on her lovely necklace. As George stood there, aghast, she replied, 'Thank you. I wish George would cheat on me again so I could get the matching earrings.

Darling Daddy, This is Rose. Very good news. Caddy is going to marry Micheal. In case you have forgotten because you have not been home for so long he is the one with the ponytail and the earring that you do not like. And Caddy says she will have a white lace dress and three bridesmaids, Saffron and Sarah and me, and a big party for everyone, all her old boyfriends too. Fireworks. A band. A big tent called a marquee. But where will we put it? Carriages with white horses for us all to go to the church. Afterward Caddy and Micheal will go for a holiday to Australia to visit the Great Barrier Reef. Caddy has it all worked out and Mummy says Yes She Can Of Course You Can Darling Of Course You Must Do That. Saffron said That Will Cost a Few Weeks Housekeeping and Mummy said Yes But We Do Not Need to Worry About That. DADDY WILL PAY. Love, Rose.

Gate C22 At gate C22 in the Portland airport a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed a woman arriving from Orange County. They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking, the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other like he’d just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island, like she’d been released at last from ICU, snapped out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing. Neither of them was young. His beard was gray. She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine her saying she had to lose. But they kissed lavish kisses like the ocean in the early morning, the way it gathers and swells, sucking each rock under, swallowing it again and again. We were all watching– passengers waiting for the delayed flight to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots, the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling sunglasses. We couldn’t look away. We could taste the kisses crushed in our mouths. But the best part was his face. When he drew back and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost as though he were a mother still open from giving birth, as your mother must have looked at you, no matter what happened after–if she beat you or left you or you’re lonely now–you once lay there, the vernix not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth. The whole wing of the airport hushed, all of us trying to slip into that woman’s middle-aged body, her plaid Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, glasses, little gold hoop earrings, tilting our heads up.

I saw it in the girls, in their loud laughter, in their gilded bamboo earrings that announced their names thrice over. And I saw it in their brutal language and hard gaze, how they would cut you with their eyes and destroy you with their words for the sin of playing too much. “Keep my name out your mouth,” they would say. I would watch them after school, how they squared off like boxers, vaselined up, earrings off, Reeboks on, and leaped at each other.

She swallows and swallows the water. And as she swallows she swallows the possibility she will always be alone. Swallows the river that will flow into the sea that is made from other waters that have flowed from mountains and hills, that will leak into oceans. She swallows geography, learns to swim in changing tides and temperatures, learns different strokes of the arms and legs, learns to speak in many tongues. She does this because she has no choice but to do so, and she comes out of the river to find him there, holding her earrings in his hand, and he says, ‘But they don’t fit. Who are you?’" (from "Swallowing Geography" by Deborah Levy)

They are demanding equal rights with us,’ says Mrs. Fiedke. ‘That’s why I never vote with the Liberals. Perfume, jewellery, hair down to their shoulders, and I’m not talking about the ones who were born like that. I mean, the ones that can’t help it should be put on an island. It’s the others I’m talking about. There was a time they would stand up and open the door for you. They would take their hat off. But they want their equality today. All I say is that if God had intended them to be as good as us he wouldn’t have made them different from us to the naked eye. They don’t want to be all dressed alike any more. Which is only a move against us. You couldn’t run an army like that, let alone the male sex. With all due respects to Mr. Fiedke, may he rest in peace, the male sex is getting out of hand. Of course, Mr. Fiedke knew his place as a man, give him his due.’ ….. ‘If we don’t look lively,’ she says, ‘they will be taking over the homes and the children, and sitting about having chats while we go and fight to defend them and work to keep them. They won’t be content with equal rights only. Next thing they’ll want the upper hand, mark my words. Diamond earrings, I’ve read in the paper.

And anyway, who defines “real life”? Who says “real life” is property ladders and hideous pearl earrings? “Shit-boring tedious life,” more like.

You say I’m a demigod. I say I’m a receipt. My dad crafted a pair of earrings for Freya. She married him for a day. She

People often say that the truth hurts. Hell no, it hurts even more if you do a whole bunch of foolishness to try to avoid it.

But you – no, there’s all manner of things you think but don’t say. I wonder what they are?

Spiritual but not religious,” Zachary clarifies. He doesn’t say what he is thinking, which is that his church is held-breath story listening and late-night-concert ear-ringing rapture and perfect-boss fight-button pressing. That his religion is buried in the silence of freshly fallen snow, in a carefully crafted cocktail, in between the pages of a book somewhere

I think most women, if you asked them, if they were truly honest, what they would say is, they want a nap. And possibly earrings that go with everything, which is impossible, of course.

Nonsense. And don’t you go marrying just anybody, for love,” she said. “Remember that love cannot last; it never, never does; but if you marry all this it’s for your life. One day, don’t forget, you’ll be middle-aged and think what that must be like for a woman who can’t have, say, a pair of diamond earrings. A woman of my age needs diamonds near her face, to give a sparkle.

Things I Used to Get Hit For: Talking back. Being smart. Acting stupid. Not listening. Not answering the first time. Not doing what I’m told. Not doing it the second time I’m told. Running, jumping, yelling, laughing, falling down, skipping stairs, lying in the snow, rolling in the grass, playing in the dirt, walking in mud, not wiping my feet, not taking my shoes off. Sliding down the banister, acting like a wild Indian in the hallway. Making a mess and leaving it. Pissing my pants, just a little. Peeing the bed, hardly at all. Sleeping with a butter knife under my pillow. Shitting the bed because I was sick and it just ran out of me, but still my fault because I’m old enough to know better. Saying shit instead of crap or poop or number two. Not knowing better. Knowing something and doing it wrong anyway. Lying. Not confessing the truth even when I don’t know it. Telling white lies, even little ones, because fibbing isn’t fooling and not the least bit funny. Laughing at anything that’s not funny, especially cripples and retards. Covering up my white lies with more lies, black lies. Not coming the exact second I’m called. Getting out of bed too early, sometimes before the birds, and turning on the TV, which is one reason the picture tube died. Wearing out the cheap plastic hole on the channel selector by turning it so fast it sounds like a machine gun. Playing flip-and-catch with the TV’s volume button then losing it down the hole next to the radiator pipe. Vomiting. Gagging like I’m going to vomit. Saying puke instead of vomit. Throwing up anyplace but in the toilet or in a designated throw-up bucket. Using scissors on my hair. Cutting Kelly’s doll’s hair really short. Pinching Kelly. Punching Kelly even though she kicked me first. Tickling her too hard. Taking food without asking. Eating sugar from the sugar bowl. Not sharing. Not remembering to say please and thank you. Mumbling like an idiot. Using the emergency flashlight to read a comic book in bed because batteries don’t grow on trees. Splashing in puddles, even the puddles I don’t see until it’s too late. Giving my mother’s good rhinestone earrings to the teacher for Valentine’s Day. Splashing in the bathtub and getting the floor wet. Using the good towels. Leaving the good towels on the floor, though sometimes they fall all by themselves. Eating crackers in bed. Staining my shirt, tearing the knee in my pants, ruining my good clothes. Not changing into old clothes that don’t fit the minute I get home. Wasting food. Not eating everything on my plate. Hiding lumpy mashed potatoes and butternut squash and rubbery string beans or any food I don’t like under the vinyl seat cushions Mom bought for the wooden kitchen chairs. Leaving the butter dish out in summer and ruining the tablecloth. Making bubbles in my milk. Using a straw like a pee shooter. Throwing tooth picks at my sister. Wasting toothpicks and glue making junky little things that no one wants. School papers. Notes from the teacher. Report cards. Whispering in church. Sleeping in church. Notes from the assistant principal. Being late for anything. Walking out of Woolworth’s eating a candy bar I didn’t pay for. Riding my bike in the street. Leaving my bike out in the rain. Getting my bike stolen while visiting Grandpa Rudy at the hospital because I didn’t put a lock on it. Not washing my feet. Spitting. Getting a nosebleed in church. Embarrassing my mother in any way, anywhere, anytime, especially in public. Being a jerk. Acting shy. Being impolite. Forgetting what good manners are for. Being alive in all the wrong places with all the wrong people at all the wrong times.

Spiritual but not religious,” Zachary clarifies. He doesn’t say what he is thinking, which is that his church is held-breath story listening and late-night-concert ear-ringing rapture and perfect-boss fight-button pressing. That his religion is buried in the silence of freshly fallen snow, in a carefully crafted cocktail, in between the pages of a book somewhere after the beginning but before the ending. He

There was a small stone in her palm, a deep blue opal. I leaned a little closer, eyeing it. It was set on a silver stud—an earring. “It should suffice to contain the parasite for what time remains,” Mab said. “Put it on.” “My ears aren’t pierced,” I objected. Mab arched an eyebrow. “Are you the Winter Knight or some sort of puling child?” I scowled at her. “Come over here and say that.” At that, Mab calmly stepped onto the shore of Demonreach, until her toes were almost touching mine. She was several inches over six feet tall, and barely had to reach up to take my earlobe in her fingers. “Wait,” I said. “Wait.” She paused. “The left one.” Mab tilted her head. “Why?” “It’s . . . Look, it’s a mortal thing. Just do the left one, okay?” She exhaled briefly through her nose. Then she shook her head and changed ears.

I reach up to toy with her gold hoop earrings. “I like these.” “Thank you. My boyfriend gave them to me,” she says pointedly. I bite back a grin. That’s so cute. She thinks I give a fuck about her boyfriend.

I’m agnostopagan.” The Keeper cocks his head questioningly. “Spiritual but not religious,” Zachary clarifies. He doesn’t say what he is thinking, which is that his church is held-breath story listening and late-night-concert ear-ringing rapture and perfect-boss fight-button pressing. That his religion is buried in the silence of freshly fallen snow, in a carefully crafted cocktail, in between the pages of a book somewhere after the beginning but before the ending.

He says, "There’s nothing left of me. I’m like a ruby held up to the sunrise. Is it still a stone, or a world made of redness? It has no resistance to sunlight." This is how Hallaj said, I am God, and told the truth! The ruby and the sunrise are one. Be courageous and discipline yourself. Completely become hearing and ear, and wear this sun-ruby as an earring. === * As quoted in Head and Heart : A Personal Exploration of Science and the Sacred (2002) by Victor Mansfield

It was silly to remember the stories of us not getting along. The melodrama of any couple breaking apart. My feelings for the man who stayed for a month in the neighboring apartment who made jewelry. He lay earrings on the bedspread and let me pick a pair. Feathers I picked and even wore. Mistaking the relief from loneliness that meeting another fragile soul can bring about, mistaking that for love, but who's to say it wasn't love, or what I felt for Richard, that it was love. Who's to say.

The smile that curled his lips was as arrogant as it was beautiful. “You need to accept the fact that you’re Orange and that you’re always going to be alone because of it.” A measure of calm had returned to Clancy’s voice. His nostrils flared when I tried to turn the door handle again. He slammed both hands against it to keep me from going anywhere, towering over me. “I saw what you want,” Clancy said. “And it’s not your parents. It’s not even your friends. What you want is to be with him, like you were in the cabin yesterday, or in that car in the woods. I don’t want to lose you, you said. Is he really that important?” Rage boiled up from my stomach, burning my throat. “How dare you? You said you wouldn’t—you said—” He let out a bark of laughter. “God, you’re naive. I guess this explains how that League woman was able to trick you into thinking you were something less than a monster.” “You said you would help me,” I whispered. He rolled his eyes. “All right, are you ready for the last lesson? Ruby Elizabeth Daly, you are alone and you always will be. If you weren’t so stupid, you would have figured it out by now, but since it’s beyond you, let me spell it out: You will never be able to control your abilities. You will never be able to avoid being pulled into someone’s head, because there’s some part of you that doesn’t want to know how to control them. No, not when it would mean having to embrace them. You’re too immature and weak-hearted to use them the way they’re meant to be used. You’re scared of what that would make you.” I looked away. “Ruby, don’t you get it? You hate what you are, but you were given these abilities for a reason. We both were. It’s our right to use them—we have to use them to stay ahead, to keep the others in their place.” His finger caught the stretched-out collar of my shirt and gave it a tug. “Stop it.” I was proud of how steady my voice was. As Clancy leaned in, he slipped a hazy image beneath my closed eyes—the two of us just before he walked into my memories. My stomach knotted as I watched my eyes open in terror, his lips pressed against mine. “I’m so glad we found each other,” he said, voice oddly calm. “You can help me. I thought I knew everything, but you…” My elbow flew up and clipped him under the chin. Clancy stumbled back with a howl of pain, pressing both hands to his face. I had half a second to get the hell out, and I took it, twisting the handle of the door so hard that the lock popped itself out. “Ruby! Wait, I didn’t mean—!” A face appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Lizzie. I saw her lips part in surprise, her many earrings jangling as I shoved past her. “Just an argument,” I heard Clancy say, weakly. “It’s fine, just let her go.

Roe sinks his head into his hands, pushing his hair back off his face to reveal two pearl earrings. “What am I going to do?” “You can come to my house. Pat has clothes you can borrow before going home.” “No, I mean, what am I going to do?” he says, his voice breaking. He gestures to himself in his ripped red velvet. “How am I supposed to live?

He doesn't say what he is thinking, which is that his church is held-breath story listening and late-night-concert ear-ringing rapture and perfect-boss-fight-button pressing. That his religion is buried in the silence of freshly fallen snow, in a carefully crafted cocktail, in between the pages of a book somewhere after the beginning but before the ending.

Spiritual but not religious," Zachary clarifies. He doesn't say what he is thinking, which is that his church is held-breath story listening and late-night-concert ear-ringing rapture and perfect-boss fight-button pressing. That his religion is buried in the silence of freshly fallen snow, in a carefully crafted cocktail, in between the pages of a book somewhere after the beginning but before the ending.

If she’d known what a good shot you are,” he whispered past the unfamiliar tightness in his throat, “she’d never have dared.” His hand lifted to her wet cheek, holding it pressed against his chest. “You could always call her out, you know.” The spasmodic shaking in Elizabeth’s slender shoulders began to subside, and Ian added with forced tightness, “Better yet, Robert should stand in for you. He’s not as fine a shot as you are, but he’s a hell of a lot faster…” A teary giggle escaped the girl in his arms, and Ian continued, “On the other hand, if you’re holding the pistol, you’ll have some choices to make, and they’re not easy…” When he didn’t say more, Elizabeth drew a shaky breath. “What choices?” she finally whispered against his chest after a moment. “What to shoot, for one thing,” he joked, stroking her back. “Robert was wearing Hessians, so I had a tassel for a target. I suppose, though, you could always shoot the bow off Valerie’s gown.” Elizabeth’s shoulders gave a lurch, and a choked laugh escaped her. Overwhelmed with relief, Ian kept his left arm around her and gently took her chin between his forefinger and thumb, tipping her face up to his. Her magnificent eyes were still wet with tears, but a smile was trembling on her rosy lips. Teasingly, he continued, “A bow isn’t much of a challenge for an expert marksman like you. I suppose you could insist that she hold up an earring between her fingers so you could shoot that instead.” The image was so absurd that Elizabeth chuckled. Without being conscious of what he was doing, Ian moved his thumb from her chin to her lower lip, rubbing lightly against its inviting fullness. He finally realized what he was doing and stopped. Elizabeth saw his jaw tighten. She drew a shuddering breath, sensing he’d been on the verge of kissing her, and had just decided not to do it. After the last shattering minutes, Elizabeth no longer knew who was friend or foe, she only knew she’d felt safe and secure in his arms, and at that moment his arms were already beginning to loosen, and his expression was turning aloof. Not certain what she was going to say or even what she wanted, she whispered a single, shaky word, filled with confusion and a plea for understanding, her green eyes searching his: “Please-“ Ian realized what she was asking for, but he responded with a questioning lift of his brows. “I-“ she began, uncomfortably aware of the knowing look in his eyes. “Yes?” he prompted. “I don’t know-exactly,” she admitted. All she knew for certain was that, for just a few minutes more, she would have liked to be in his arms. “Elizabeth, if you want to be kissed, all you have to do is put your lips on mine.” “What!” “You heard me.” “Of all the arrogant-“ He shook his head in mild rebuke. “Spare me the maidenly protests. If you’re suddenly as curious as I am to find out if it was as good between us as it now seems in retrospect, then say so.” His own suggestion startled Ian, although having made it, he saw no great harm in exchanging a few kisses if that was what she wanted.

Anne Lamott says in Traveling Mercies, “I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools—friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty—and said, Do the best you can with these, they will have to do. And mostly, against all odds, they’re enough.

Then Chameroy spoke. 'You always put the blame on opium, but as I see it the case of Freneuse is much more complicated. Him, an invalid? No - a character from the tales of Hoffmann! Have you never taken the trouble to look at him carefully? That pallor of decay; the twitching of his bony hands, more Japanese than chrysanthemums; the arabesque profile; that vampiric emaciation - has all of that never given you cause to reflect? In spite of his supple body and his callow face Freneuse is a hundred thousand years old. That man has lived before, in ancient times under the reigns of Heliogabalus, Alexander IV and the last of the Valois. What am I saying? That man is Henri III himself. I have in my library an edition of Ronsard - a rare edition, bound in pigskin with metal trimmings - which contains a portrait of Henri engraved on vellum. One of these nights I will bring the volume here to show you, and you may judge for yourselves. Apart from the ruff, the doublet and the earrings, you would believe that you were looking at the Due de Freneuse. As far as I'm concerned, his presence here inevitably makes me ill - and so long as he is present, there is such an oppression, such a heaviness...

When I say to you that what happened to those girls was the greatest hurt of my life, I am speaking the God’s honest truth. To understand that statement, you have to understand where I came from. When I was growing up Daddy had a good practice, and it afforded us some things. We owned our own house, took vacations. I got my hair done in a real beauty shop, not somebody’s kitchen. Our little family managed to live dignified in undignified times. Daddy shined his shoes every morning. Mama wore earrings. These little acts might seem simple to you, but baby, let me tell you. They held back the storm.

Will you be needing to know the location of Mecca?” the Keeper asks. “Oh, no, thanks, though. I’m agnostopagan.” The Keeper cocks his head questioningly. “Spiritual but not religious,” Zachary clarifies. He doesn’t say what he is thinking, which is that his church is held-breath story listening and late-night-concert ear-ringing rapture and perfect-boss fight-button pressing. That his religion is buried in the silence of freshly fallen snow, in a carefully crafted cocktail, in between the pages of a book somewhere after the beginning but before the ending. He wonders what, exactly, was in that thing he drank earlier.

In the last few years she had realized that all you have to do to become invisible is be a woman of a certain age, without any outstanding features: it’s automatic. Not only invisible to men, but also to women, who no longer treat her as competition in anything. It is a new and surprising sensation, how people’s eyes just sort of float right over her face, her cheeks and her nose, not even skimming the surface. They look straight through her, no doubt looking past her at ads and landscapes and schedules. Yes, yes, all signs point to her having become invisible, though now she thinks, too, of all the opportunities that this invisibility might afford – she simply has to learn how she can take them. For example, if something crazy were to happen, nobody on the scene would even remember her having been there, or if they did all they’d say would be, ‘some woman’, or ‘somebody else was over there…’ Men are more ruthless here than women, who sometimes still paid her compliments on things like earrings, if she wore them, while men don’t even try to hide it, never looking at her longer than a second. Just occasionally some child would fixate on her for some unknown reason, making a meticulous and dispassionate examination of her face until finally turning away, towards the future.

Will seeing me be a problem?” While there’s this overwhelming voice screaming yes in the back of my mind, there’s a smile twisting on my face and I bring my hands together in front of me, feeling suddenly shy. Did he just say...? “So we’re seeing each other?” Isaiah touches an earring. “Yeah. I guess we are.” My head bobs back and forth because I so need more. “Like more than friends?” “We can be friends if you want. But...” “But what?” My stomach begins to plummet. Did I misread all of this? His gray eyes bore into mine with an intensity I’ve never seen from anyone before. “But I want more.” “More?” I whisper. “I want to kiss you again.

Beside him, Lazar was saying, ‘It’s a day’s ride to Acquitart, and Jord says it’s our last stop before Ravenel. Do you know if—’ Laurent was well made and capable, and Damen was a man, as other men. Half the soldiers in this camp wanted Laurent under them. The body’s reaction could be discounted, as it had been, determinedly, at the inn. Any man would have been roused by Laurent playing pet in his lap. Even knowing what was under the earring. ‘All right,’ he heard Lazar say. He’d forgotten Lazar was there. After a long moment, he took his eyes off Laurent and looked back at Lazar, who was gazing at him with a rather dry but understanding smile quirking the side of his mouth. ‘All right what?’ said Damen. ‘All right, you’re not fucking him,’ said Lazar.

Perhaps a necklace of tears to weep so that she won't have to? A pin of teeth to bite annoying husbands? No.' He continues to walk through the small space. He lifts a ring. 'To bring on a child?' And then, seeing my face, lifts a pair of earrings, one in the shape of a crescent moon and the other in the shape of a star. 'Ah, yes. Here. This is what you want.' 'What do they do?' I ask. He laughs. 'They are beautiful- isn't that enough?' I give him a skeptical look. 'It would be enough, considering how exquisite they are, but I bet it isn't all.' He enjoys that. 'Clever girl. They are not only beautiful, but they add to beauty. They make someone more lovely than they were, painfully lovely. Her husband will not leave her side for quite some time.' The look on his face is a challenge. He believes I am too vain to give such a gift to my sister. How well he knows the selfish human heart. Taryn will be a beautiful bride. How much more do I, her twin, want to put myself in her shadow? How lovely can I bear her to be? And yet, what better gift for a human girl wedded to the beauty of the Folk? 'What would you take for them?' I ask. 'Oh, any number of little things. A year of your life. The luster of your hair. The sound of your laugh.' 'My laugh is not such a sweet sound as all that.' 'Not sweet, but I bet it's rare,' he says, and I wonder at his knowing that. 'What about my tears?' I ask. 'You could make another necklace.' He looks at me, as though evaluating how often I weep. 'I will take a single tear,' he says finally. 'And you will take an offer to the High King for me.

I’m not what you think I am, Aladdin! I will betray you, and I will hurt you, because that is what I am. Why do you think Nardukha rips souls from the living and creates jinnis? Why do you think he sends us into the world? To make your miserable dreams come true? To bring you happiness?” I laugh sourly. “He gives you the thing you want most and uses it to destroy you. Look at yourself. You’re a prince. You have money, power, privilege. The chance to avenge your parents. And you’re miserable.” Aladdin stares at me, and in his eyes is pity. “I’ve been making myself miserable my whole life,” he says softly. “I convinced myself long ago that if I could get revenge on Sulifer, I could finally move on. That I could erase the memory of the day my parents died, when I held their severed heads and watched their blood run in the gutters. But as you say, here I am, a step away from that vengeance—and it has soured on my tongue. I don’t want it anymore.” He sighs and looks up at the sky, as if searching for words among the stars. “You don’t make me miserable, Zahra. I do that to myself, because I’m too weak, too afraid to admit that it isn’t Sulifer I’m angry at—it’s me. My parents were killed because of me. The day before they were executed, I was caught by the guards for stealing an earring, and when they found out who I was, Sulifer had me whipped until I told him where my parents were. And after they were dead, he gave me back the earring as payment for turning my mother and father over to him.” Lowering his gaze to meet mine, he brushes his fingers over the ring in his ear. “I’ve worn it every day since, to remind myself that nothing—nothing—is worth betraying someone you love.

However people sincerely call on me, I come to them and fulfill their hearts’ desires. They use many paths to reach me. It might sound philosophical, but we can make it a little clearer by saying that God, the Supreme One, the Incarnation, is not a person. Then what is God? Simplest to understand is that God is the peace in us. We are born with joy. We are peace and joy personified. We are purity personified. Unfortunately we seem to be ignoring that. We’re ignorant of our own true nature. So we run after things to make us happy and to find peace. Behind all our efforts, our basic motive is to find happiness and thus to find peace. All our actions are for that good. They need not be religious. We’re all working toward that happiness. Even all these wars, fights and competition are ways people look for happiness. Even when people steal things, they think they’re going to be happy by stealing. So the ultimate motive behind all our actions is to find that joy and peace. That’s what Krishna means when he says, “Whatever people do, ultimately their interest is in me.” When he says “me,” it means that peace: “I am that joy. I am eternal. Unfortunately many don’t realize that I, as peace, am already there in them.” Sometimes you put on your earrings and then forget them. Then you spend hours pulling out all the drawers until somebody comes, pinches your ears and says, “Here they are.” It’s the same way spiritually. Peace, or your true Self, is something subjective. You look about for it outside of you as some object, something different from you. That’s why you miss it. If occasionally you seem to be enjoying some happiness or peace, that’s nothing but a reflection of your own peace within.

See my coat over there? I want you to look in the pockets.” CyFi’s heavy coat is a few yards away tossed over the seat of a swing. Lev goes to the swing set and picks up the coat. He reaches into an inside pocket and finds, of all things, a gold cigarette lighter. He pulls it out. “Is that it, Cy? You want a cigarette?” If a cigarette would bring CyFi out of this, Lev would be the first to light it for him. There are things far more illegal than cigarettes, anyway. “Check the other pockets.” Lev searches the other pockets for a pack of cigarettes, but there are none. Instead he finds a small treasure trove. Jeweled earrings, watches, a gold necklace, a diamond bracelet—things that shimmer and shine even in the dim daylight. “Cy, what did you do . . . ?” “I already told you, it wasn’t me! Now go take all that stuff and get rid of it. Get rid of it and don’t let me see where you put it.” Then he covers his eyes like it’s a game of hide-and-seek. “Go—before he changes my mind!” Lev pulls everything out of the pocket and, cradling it in his arms, runs to the far end of the playground. He digs in the cold sand and drops it all in, kicking sand back over it. When he’s done, he smoothes it over with the side of his shoe and drops a scattering of leaves above it. He goes back to CyFi, who’s sitting there just like Lev left him, hands over his face. “It’s done,” Lev says. “You can look now.” When Cy takes his hands away, there’s blood all over his face from the cuts on his hands. Cy stares at his hands, then looks at Lev helplessly, like . . . well, like a kid who just got hurt in a playground. Lev half expects him to cry. “You wait here,” Lev says. “I’ll go get some bandages.” He knows he’ll have to steal them. He wonders what Pastor Dan would say about all the things he’s been stealing lately. “Thank you, Fry,” Cy says. “You did good, and I ain’t gonna forget it.” The Old Umber lilt is back in his voice. The twitching has stopped.

In his worn blue jeans and a black T-shirt, the early-morning sun hits Isaiah just right, highlighting him like he’s a relaxed tiger bathing in the warmth. The light glints off his double rows of hoop earrings and there’s a twinkle in his eyes that makes me feel like he has a secret, but not the type kept from me. No, it’s the type that suggests I’m in on it, and that it involves a lack of my clothes. And maybe some of his. As if I spoke the thought instead of keeping it internal, Isaiah lifts his shirt to scratch at a spot right above his hip bone. Good Lord, he’s pretty. I soak in the sight of the muscles in his abdomen like I’m a plant in the Sahara Desert, except it doesn’t quench my thirst. It only causes my mouth to run dry. Isaiah smiles like he knows what I’m thinking, and heat licks up my body and pools in my cheeks. What really causes my blood to curve into itself is the wicked gleam in his eye. It’s a spark that says he’s done very naughty things I’ve never even heard about.

So Dad was a tedious, well-connected workaholic. But the other thing you need to understand is that Mom was a living wet dream. A former Guess model and Miller Lite girl, she was tall, curvy and gorgeous. At thirty-eight, she had somehow managed to remain ageless and maintained her killer body. She’s five-foot-nine with never-ending legs, generous breasts and full hips that scoop dramatically into her slim waist. People who say Barbie’s proportions are unrealistic obviously never met my stepmother. Her face is pretty too, with long eyelashes, sculpted cheekbones and big, blue eyes that tease and smile at the same time. Her long brown hair rests on her shoulders in thick, tousled layers like in one of those Pantene Pro-V commercials. One memory seared in to my brain from my early teenage years is of Mom parading around the house one evening in nothing but her heels and underwear. I was sitting on the couch in the living room watching TV when a flurry of long limbs and blow-dried hair burst in front of the screen. “Teddy-bear. Do you know where Silvia left the dry cleaning? I’m running late for dinner with the Blackwells and I can’t find my red cocktail dress.” Mom stood before me in matching off-white, La Perla bra and panties and Manolo Blahnik stilettos. Some subtle gold hoop earrings hung from her ears and a tiny bit of mascara on her eye lashes highlighted her sparkling, blue eyes. Aside from the missing dress, she was otherwise ready to go. “I think she left them hanging on the chair next to the other sofa,” I said, trying my best not to gape at Mom’s perfect body. Mom trotted across the room, her heels tocking on the hard wood floor. I watched her slim, sexy back as she lifted the dry cleaning onto the sofa and then bent over to sort through the garments. My eyes followed her long mane of brown hair down to her heart-shaped ass. Her panties stretched tightly across each cheek as she bent further down. “Found it!” She cried, springing back upright, causing her 35Cs to bounce up and down from the sudden motion. They were thrusting proudly off her ribcage and bulging out over the fabric of the balconette bra like two titanic eggs. Her supple skin pushed out over the silk edges. And then she was gone as quickly as she had arrived, her long legs striding back down the hallway.

Melinda Pratt rides city bus number twelve to her cello lesson, wearing her mother's jean jacket and only one sock. Hallo, world, says Minna. Minna often addresses the world, sometimes silently, sometimes out loud. Bus number twelve is her favorite place for watching, inside and out. The bus passes cars and bicycles and people walking dogs. It passes store windows, and every so often Minna sees her face reflection, two dark eyes in a face as pale as a winter dawn. There are fourteen people on the bus today. Minna stands up to count them. She likes to count people, telephone poles, hats, umbrellas, and, lately, earrings. One girl, sitting directly in front of Minna, has seven earrings, five in one ear. She has wisps of dyed green hair that lie like forsythia buds against her neck. There are, Minna knows, a king, a past president of the United States, and a beauty queen on the bus. Minna can tell by looking. The king yawns and scratches his ear with his little finger. Scratches, not picks. The beauty queen sleeps, her mouth open, her hair the color of tomatoes not yet ripe. The past preside of the United States reads Teen Love and Body Builder's Annual. Next to Minna, leaning against the seat, is her cello in its zippered canvas case. Next to her cello is her younger brother, McGrew, who is humming. McGrew always hums. Sometimes he hums sentences, though most often it comes out like singing. McGrew's teachers do not enjoy McGrew answering questions in hums or song. Neither does the school principal, Mr. Ripley. McGrew spends lots of time sitting on the bench outside Mr. Ripley's office, humming. Today McGrew is humming the newspaper. First the headlines, then the sports section, then the comics. McGrew only laughs at the headlines. Minna smiles at her brother. He is small and stocky and compact like a suitcase. Minna loves him. McGrew always tells the truth, even when he shouldn't. He is kind. And he lends Minna money from the coffee jar he keeps beneath his mattress. Minna looks out the bus window and thinks about her life. Her one life. She likes artichokes and blue fingernail polish and Mozart played too fast. She loves baseball, and the month of March because no one else much likes March, and every shade of brown she has ever seen. But this is only one life. Someday, she knows, she will have another life. A better one. McGrew knows this, too. McGrew is ten years old. He knows nearly everything. He knows, for instance, that his older sister, Minna Pratt, age eleven, is sitting patiently next to her cello waiting to be a woman.

Korie: Ray’s daughter, Rachel, and I were best friends, and they were going to Phil’s house for dinner one night. They invited me to go along. I still remembered Willie from camp, so needless to say, I was just dying to go. I begged my parents to let me go with them. They said yes! I even remember what I wore at Willie’s house-a black top with fluorescent green earrings. Don’t judge…it was the eighties. When Rachel and I got to the Robertsons’ house, the first thing Phil said to us was: “Have you met my boys, Jason Silas and Willie Jess? They’ll make good husbands someday. They’re good hunters and fisherman.” I was so nervous. I couldn’t believe this was happening. The other thing I remember about walking in their home was that Phil and Kay had a sign on the door that said, “Honeymoon in progress.” Phil and Kay have never been shy about their honeymooning…another thing that shocked me about their family. Once we had eaten, Willie took us back to his room, which was actually the laundry room. He made us laugh the whole time. He would stick his thumb in his mouth and pretend that he was blowing up his muscles. He did acupressure tricks and showed us our pressure points. This was all very impressive to a couple of fifth-grade girls. After a while, I decided I was going to try to really impress Korie. I started punching the tiles on the ceiling of the laundry room, which was a trick one of my buddies taught me. I’d rear back and just punch my fist through the ceiling and busted tile would fall over onto the floor. I’m sure she was really impressed.

I heard the fear in the first music I ever knew, the music that pumped from boom boxes full of grand boast and bluster. The boys who stood out on Garrison and Liberty up on Park Heights loved this music because it told them, against all evidence and odds, that they were masters of their own lives, their own streets, and their own bodies. I saw it in the girls, in their loud laughter, in their gilded bamboo earrings that announced their names thrice over. And I saw it in their brutal language and hard gaze, how they would cut you with their eyes and destroy you with their words for the sin of playing too much. “Keep my name out your mouth,” they would say. I would watch them after school, how they squared off like boxers, vaselined up, earrings off, Reeboks on, and leaped at each other. I felt the fear in the visits to my Nana’s home in Philadelphia. You never knew her. I barely knew her, but what I remember is her hard manner, her rough voice. And I knew that my father’s father was dead and that my uncle Oscar was dead and that my uncle David was dead and that each of these instances was unnatural. And I saw it in my own father, who loves you, who counsels you, who slipped me money to care for you. My father was so very afraid. I felt it in the sting of his black leather belt, which he applied with more anxiety than anger, my father who beat me as if someone might steal me away, because that is exactly what was happening all around us. Everyone had lost a child, somehow, to the streets, to jail, to drugs, to guns. It was said that these lost girls were sweet as honey and would not hurt a fly. It was said that these lost boys had just received a GED and had begun to turn their lives around. And now they were gone, and their legacy was a great fear. Have they told you this story? When your grandmother was sixteen years old a young man knocked on her door. The young man was your Nana Jo’s boyfriend. No one else was home. Ma allowed this young man to sit and wait until your Nana Jo returned. But your great-grandmother got there first. She asked the young man to leave. Then she beat your grandmother terrifically, one last time, so that she might remember how easily she could lose her body. Ma never forgot. I remember her clutching my small hand tightly as we crossed the street. She would tell me that if I ever let go and were killed by an onrushing car, she would beat me back to life. When I was six, Ma and Dad took me to a local park. I slipped from their gaze and found a playground. Your grandparents spent anxious minutes looking for me. When they found me, Dad did what every parent I knew would have done—he reached for his belt. I remember watching him in a kind of daze, awed at the distance between punishment and offense. Later, I would hear it in Dad’s voice—“Either I can beat him, or the police.” Maybe that saved me. Maybe it didn’t. All I know is, the violence rose from the fear like smoke from a fire, and I cannot say whether that violence, even administered in fear and love, sounded the alarm or choked us at the exit. What I know is that fathers who slammed their teenage boys for sass would then release them to streets where their boys employed, and were subject to, the same justice. And I knew mothers who belted their girls, but the belt could not save these girls from drug dealers twice their age. We, the children, employed our darkest humor to cope. We stood in the alley where we shot basketballs through hollowed crates and cracked jokes on the boy whose mother wore him out with a beating in front of his entire fifth-grade class. We sat on the number five bus, headed downtown, laughing at some girl whose mother was known to reach for anything—cable wires, extension cords, pots, pans. We were laughing, but I know that we were afraid of those who loved us most. Our parents resorted to the lash the way flagellants in the plague years resorted to the scourge.

Montreal October 1704 Temperature 55 degrees Eben was looking at Sarah in the way every girl prays some boy will one day look at her. “I will marry you, Sarah,” said Eben. “I will be a good husband. A Puritan husband. Who will one day take us both back home.” Wind shifted the lace of Sarah’s gown and the auburn of one loose curl. “I love you, Sarah,” said Eben. “I’ve always loved you.” Tears came to Sarah’s eyes: she who had not wept over her own family. She stood as if it had not occurred to her that she could be loved; that an English boy could adore her. “Oh, Eben!” she whispered. “Oh, yes, oh, thank you, I will marry you. But will they let us, Eben? We will need permission.” “I’ll ask my father,” said Eben. “I’ll ask Father Meriel.” They were not touching. They were yearning to touch, they were leaning forward, but they were holding back. Because it is wrong? wondered Mercy. Or because they know they will never get permission? “My French family will put up a terrible fuss,” said Sarah anxiously. “Pierre might even summon his fellow officers and do something violent.” Eben grinned. “Not if I have Huron warriors behind me.” The Indians rather enjoyed being French allies one day and difficult neighbors the next. Lorette Indians might find this a fine way to stab a French soldier in the back without drawing blood. They would need Father Meriel. He could arrange anything if he chose; he had power among all the peoples. But he might say no, and so might Eben’s Indian family. Mercy translated what was going on for Nistenha and Snow Walker. “They want to get married,” she told them. “Isn’t it wonderful?” She couldn’t help laughing from the joy and the terror of it. Ransom would no longer be the first word in Sarah’s heart. Eben would be. Mercy said, “Eben asked her right here in the street, Snow Walker. He wants to save her from marriage to a French soldier she doesn’t want. He’s loved Sarah since the march.” The two Indians had no reaction. For a moment Mercy thought she must have spoken to them in English. Nistenha turned to walk away and Snow Walker turned with her. If Nistenha was not interested in Sarah and Eben’s plight, no Indian would be. Mercy called on her memory of every speech in every ceremony, every dignified phrase and powerful word. “Honored mother,” she said softly. “Honored sister. We are in need and we beg you to hear our petition.” Nistenha stopped walking, turned back and stared at her in amazement. Sarah and Eben and Snow Walker stared at her in amazement. Sam can build canoes, thought Mercy. I can make a speech. “This woman my sister and this man my brother wish to spend their lives together. My brother will need the generous permission of his Indian father. Already we know that my sister will be refused the permission of her French owners. We will need an ally to support us in our request. We will need your strength and your wisdom. We beseech you, Mother, that you stand by us and help us.” The city of Montreal swirled around them. Eben, property of an Indian father in Lorette; Sarah, property of a French family in Montreal; and Mercy, property of Tannhahorens, awaited her answer. “Your words fill me with pride, Munnunock,” said Nistenha softly. She reached into her shopping bundle. Slowly she drew out a fine French china cup, undoubtedly meant for the feast of Flying Legs. She held it for a moment, and then her stern face softened and she gave it to Eben. Indians sealed a promise with a gift. She would help them. From her bundle, Snow Walker took dangling silver earrings she must have bought for Mercy and handed them to Sarah. Because she knew that Sarah’s Mohawk was not good enough and that Eben was too stirred to speak, Mercy gave the flowery thanks required after such gifts. “God bless us,” she said to Sarah and Eben, and Eben said, “He has.

One day a man notices that his co-worker is wearing an earring. This man knows his co-worker to be a somewhat conservative fellow, so naturally he’s curious about the sudden burst of fashion daring. He says, “I didn’t know you were into earrings.” “Don’t make such a big deal, it’s only an earring,” the other guy replies sheepishly. “Well, I’m curious. How long have you been wearing an earring?” “Er, ever since my wife found it in our bed.

Suddenly, the double doors of the parlor whooshed open. A large fleshy woman stood before me in full regalia. Her eyes were all made up, earrings and bracelets jangling. The sign in the window said Miss Sadie was a medium. From the look of her, I'd say that was a bit wishful.

Find the Stickers Materials: Use commercially bought stickers. Children love stickers, which make wonderful, surprise gifts. Preparation and Instructions: Before you see the child, take four or five of the stickers and hide them on your head. At the beginning, make sure the stickers can be easily found. You may want to put one sticker on each earlobe, like earrings, and one sticker on your forehead, under your hair if possible. Be creative! The Game: Begin the game by saying to the child, “I have hidden four stickers on my face. See if you can find them.” As the child begins to look for them, use the skill of tracking. (Tracking is simply saying out loud what the child is doing. It is similar to the radio announcer at a ball game. You may say, “You are looking over by my ears, Aha! You found one. Now you are taking it off very gently and handing it to me.”) As the child hands you the stickers, put one sticker on each finger of one hand as a holding place. From this holding place you are ready to play the game again or to play a variation of the game. Variations: Once the child has located all the stickers, you can begin to play the “sticker-swap game” by saying, “I am going to take this sticker off my thumb and put it on my chin.” You proceed to do so. Then tell the child, “Take the sticker off my chin and put it on your nose.” From this point, you begin a turn-taking game in which you remove the sticker from the child’s face and place it on your face. The child then removes the sticker from your face and puts it on his or her face. Each movement of the sticker is noted out loud. You speak for yourself and for the child, unless the child catches on and begins to speak for himself or herself. Your observations may sound like this: “I am going to take the sticker off your chin and put it on my nose. Now you are taking it off my nose and putting it on your [wait for the child’s selection] ear.” Find

Silvia lets out a laugh at something Donato has said. She’s moved so she can stretch her tan legs across him. I’m watching him massage her feet. “Did Donato show you Santa Maria del Popolo?” she’s asking me. “It has my favorite Caravaggio.” Donato says something in Italian, which makes her laugh again. “It’s where Nero’s ghost lives,” one of the British sisters says to me. “Do you know Nero?” I remember Donato pointing out a domineering building in the piazza. But I don’t remember him telling us about any ghosts. Cristiano is rolling a joint on his lap. “Omicida.” He lights it. “He dipped Christians in oil,” another one of them is saying as they pass the joint around. “And set them on fire to light his garden at night.” “He killed his mother.” The smoke is very strong, the air suddenly stagnant. “How do you live with so many reminders of death everywhere?” I ask. The breeze returns and I shiver. “It reminds us to live well,” Donato says, puffing on the joint. “That this life is short. You have to take what you want.” I have not thought about my wants in so long that the flood of them makes me light-headed. A drip-irrigation system for the garden, my own Tiffany stud earrings so I don’t have to always be borrowing Mom’s, one of those mid-century modern houses in Benedict Canyon, a buzzy TV show—Guy.

hipster fashion of the moment. And he wore an earring, as if to say, “I have a position, but I’m not a conformist.” The men in the audience were slumped in their seats, legs crossed, arms condescendingly folded over their chests. Laura was taking notes, accompanying every word by nodding her head of thick, curly hair. What was his trick? His face revealed few expressions; from time to time he smiled briefly, the only movement on his tanned face. Still, those smiles lit it up, and this was probably not planned. Or maybe it was, because at regular intervals he would imperceptibly lean toward the audience, and the middle-aged women with Botoxed lips clung to their seats. He talked about a recent trip in a Ford Fiesta. “We’d meet at the bar in the piazza, Giovanni and Gabriele and I, and hold impromptu discussions inspired by Malvasia.” He gave us time to marvel over the fact that he did not have an Audi. “Giovanni Ascolti and Gabriele Galli, the founders of the publishing house Marea,” Laura whispered in my ear. “Oh.” Silence floated through the room when he closed his mouth. The seconds hung suspended between us and him, in midair, as if surprised to be there. But then Vittorio took off his glasses, smiled, said, “Thank you,” and time obeyed that smile and began to flow again. The audience applauded, and the seconds too returned to their place, in the ticking of the clocks. Well

From my bedroom window, I hadn’t noticed his earring and the Motörhead tattoo on his forearm. He looked like the kind of guy who, if a bomb went off in his watering can, would raise one eyebrow and say, ‘Well, that was close.

I’m assuming your cherry has been thoroughly popped.” “Wrapped up, tossed into the lake, and died in a watery grave.” “Is that a euphemism?” “It wasn’t until just now.” “I’m jealous. Like a lot. I lost my cherry a long time ago, but I’m pretty sure the tree grew back. Can you re-virginize?” I snorted. “Don’t think that’s a thing.” “Hey, the holes in your ears can close. Why not?” “Pretty sure that’s totally different.” “Not really. Earring post or orgasm-inducing-cock. Kinda the same thing.” “I can say, with complete candor, that it is not the same thing.

You got to go get that stuff for yourself. You got to wake up every day and say, “I’m good enough, I deserve to be happy, I deserve to have all this good stuff coming my way.” You can’t depend on that to come from nobody else.

In the back of his classroom, he put his outdoor shoes in a nook and traded them for indoor flip-flops, just like the other students. He noticed that many of the kids wore colorful socks with sayings he couldn’t understand—or cartoon images of Batman. The school banned makeup, earrings, long hair, and hair dye, so socks seemed to be the main outlet for free expression.

I’m saying we can’t prove how or why that earring got there. But the common thread binding all this together seems to be you. So don’t make yourself look any more suspicious than you already do.” I realize now, even

Look into this one,' the Bomb says with a strange expression. It's Cardan as a very small child. He is dressed in a shirt that's too large for him. It hangs down like a gown. He is barefoot, his feet and shirt streaked with mud, but he wears dangling hoops in his ears, as though an adult gave him their earrings. A horned faerie woman stands nearby, and when he runs to her, she grabs his wrists before he can put his dirty hands on her skirts. She says something stern and shoves him away. When he falls, she barely notices, too busy being drawn in to conversation with other courtiers. I expect Cardan to cry, but he doesn't. Instead, he stomps off to a tree that an older boy is climbing. The boy says something, and Cardan grabs for his ankle. A moment later, the boy is on the ground, and Cardan's small grubby hand is forming a fist. At the sound of the scuffle, the faerie woman turns and laughs, clearly delighted by his escapade. When Cardan looks back at her, he's smiling, too. I shove the crystal ball back in to the drawer. Who would cherish this? It's horrible.

Android Girl Just Wants to Have a Baby! The first thing I do when I wake up is run my hands over my body. I like to make sure all my wires are in place. I lotion my silicone shell and snap my hair helmet over my head. I once had a dream I was a real girl, but when I woke up I was still myself in my paleness under the halogen light. The saliva of androids emits a spectral resonance, barely sticky between freshly-gapped teeth. After they made me, the first thing they did was peel the cellophane from my eyes. I blinked once, twice, and cried because that's how you say you are alive before you are given language. They named each of my heartbeats on the oceanic monitor: Guanyin, Yama, Nuwa, Fuxi, Chang'e, Zao-Shen. I listened to them blur into one. The fetus carves for itself a hollowed vector, a fragile wetness. In utero, extension cords are umbilical. Before puberty, I did not know there was such a thing as dishonor. Diss-on- her. This is what they said when I began to drip petrol between my legs. A tension exists between ritual and proof, a fantasy and its execution. Since then, I have been to the emergency room twice. The first time for a suicide attempt, and the second time because my earring was swallowed up by my newly pierced earlobe overnight, and when I woke up, it was tangled in a helix of wires. The idea of dying doesn't scare me but the ocean does. I was once told that fish will swim up my orifices if I am no longer a virgin. Is anyone thinking about erotic magazines when they are not aroused, pubes parted harshly down the center like red seas? My body carries the weight of four hundred eggs. I rise from a weird slumber, let them drip into the bath. This is what I'll leave behind - tiny shards purer than me. I have always been afraid of pregnant women because of their power, and because I don't yet understand what it means to carry something stubborn and blossoming inside of me, screeching towards an exit. The ectoplasm is the telos for the wound. A trance state is induced when salt is poured on it, pixel by pixel. I wish they had made me into an octopus instead, because octopuses die after their eggs hatch and crawl out into the sea, and I want to know what it's like to set something free into the dark unknown and trust it to choose mercy. If you can generate aura in a non-place, then there is no such thing as an authentic origin. In Chinese, the word for mercy translates to my heart hurts for you. They say my heart continues beating even after it is dislocated from my body. The sound of its beating comes from the valves opening and closing like a portal - Guanyin, Yama, Nuwa, Fuxi, Chang'e, Zao-Shen. I first learned about love by watching a sex tape where a girl looks up from performing fellatio and says, show them the sunset. Her boyfriend pans the camera to the sky, which is tinged violet like a bruise. In this moment, the sky displaces her, all digital and hyped, and saturates the scene until it collapses on me too, its transient witness. I move in the space between belly ring and catharsis. That night I have a dream where I am a camgirl, but all I do on screen is wash my laundry. Everybody loves me because I am a real girl doing real girl things. What lives on the border between meditation and oblivion, static and flux, a pomegranate seed and an embryo? I set up my webcam in the corner of the room and play ambient music while I scrub my underwear, letting soap bubbles rise up from the sink, laughing when they overflow on the linoleum floor - my frizzy hair, my pockmarked skin, my face slick with sweat. A body with exit wounds. I ride the bright rails of an animal forgetting. And when I wake up, the sky is a mess of blue.

Her black hair shines bright, Earrings adorning each ear just right; Innocent cuteness fills her gaze, With an English fiction book that amaze; Tiny red lips speak words so sweet, Crazy cheeks bring joy complete!

Oh!” I say, taking my Air Pods out like I’m removing clip-on earrings with a flourish in Dynasty.

anyway, who defines “real life”? Who says “real life” is property ladders and hideous pearl earrings? “Shit-boring tedious life,” more like.

FINALLY—YOU ARE A SWEEPSTAKES WINNER! I don’t know about you, but I enter all those darned magazine company sweepstakes. I go for the Reader’s Digest sweepstakes and I buy my weekly lottery tickets—after all, as a character in the movie Let It Ride said, “You could be walking around lucky and not know it.” In a lot of years, though, I have gone winless. The guys with the balloons and the giant-sized check have not shown up at my door. So the headline FINALLY—YOU ARE A SWEEPSTAKES WINNER! got me. I read that letter. And if you send a letter to every one of your customers with that headline on it, every one of them will read it. What should the letter say? Here’s an example, courtesy of the late, great copywriter, my friend Gary Halbert: Dear Valued Customer:    I am writing to tell you that your name was entered into a drawing here at my store and you have won a valuable prize.    As you know, my store, ABC Jewelry, specializes in low-cost, top-quality diamond rings and diamond earrings. Well, guess what? The other day we got in a small shipment of fake diamonds that are made with a new process that makes them look so real they almost fooled me!    Anyway, I don’t want to sell these fakes because they could cause a lot of trouble for the pawnbrokers around town. So I’ve decided to give them away to some of my good customers whose names were selected at random by having my wife, Janet, put all the names in a jar and pull out the winners.    So, you’re one of the winners—and all you’ve got to do is drop in sometime before 5:00 P.M. Friday and you’ll have a 1-karat “diamond” that looks so good it’ll knock your eyes out! Sincerely, John Jones P.S.: After 5:00 P.M. Friday, I reserve the right to give your prize to someone else. Thank you.

Señor d’Anconia,” declared the woman with the earrings, “I don’t agree with you!” “If you can refute a single sentence I uttered, madame, I shall hear it gratefully.” “Oh, I can’t answer you. I don’t have any answers, my mind doesn’t work that way, but I don’t feel that you’re right, so I know that you’re wrong.” “How do you know it?” “I feel it. I don’t go by my head, but by my heart. You might be good at logic, but you’re heartless.” “Madame, when we’ll see men dying of starvation around us, your heart won’t be of any earthly use to save them. And I’m heartless enough to say that when you’ll scream, ‘but I didn’t know it!’—you will not be forgiven.” The woman turned away, a shudder running through the flesh of her cheeks and through the angry tremor of her voice: “Well, it’s certainly a funny way to talk at a party!

What I’m saying is . . . What am I saying?” She tilted her head, the loopy earrings danced. “Okay, I like helping kids learn to see what they’re looking at. But really and truly? I always hoped one day a spark would come along, that I could fan into a flame. Some whole new vision that the world actually needs.

Trap feminism says that Black girls who have ever rocked bamboo earrings, dookie braids, Baby Phat, lace fronts, or those who have worked as hoes, scammers, call-center reps, at day cares, in retail, and those who sell waist trainers and mink lashes on Instagram are all worth the same dignity and respect we give Michelle Obama and Beyoncé.

The next morning, a group of ladies with large beaded earrings and grey hair curled from here to high heaven clustered around a kitchen table lined with green Depression glass. They had a saying around here. The higher the hair, the closer to God. And if that were true, well, the women of the Holy City would be a shoe-in when it came time for the rapture.

Mona rushed through the shower and selected her best dress, a slinky black wraparound number that she ordered on a whim, online. She piled her hair into a messy up do and lined her eyes in black liner with grey eye shadow for a smoky effect. Berry lip stick, dangly silver earrings and a spritz of perfume completed the look. Just as she was slipping on a pair of strappy heels, her cell phone buzzed. It was her Aunt Bee calling. “Darling! The BOGO sale is a great success. Alana says you almost brought the Frugalicious server down!” “I did!” “Blackberry ginger jam is a knock out!” “Well, it may have been knocked off too.” “Whatdya mean?” Aunt Bee asked. “Lacey MacInroy got hold of my recipes, and I understand she’s preparing my jam for the As You Slice It gala reception tonight.” “Why that little rat!” Aunt Bee said. “Are you going to the reception?” Mona asked. “No way! Alexander has never honored, not one of the Coupon Clipper’s requests for a sale. Are you going?” Aunt Bee asked. “Yup. On my way now. Wish me luck,” and as Mona hung up, she heard Aunt Bee squeak out, “Luck with what?” Mona admired her reflection in the mirror and declared herself ready for action. Grabbing her car keys and purse, she nearly stumbled, racing down the front steps. Driving into town, she felt a feeling she had not experienced in a long time, bravery. This new-found liberation from caring about what anyone thought about her was freeing. She felt like her old self once more, that girl she used to be the