Residual Love Quotes

Do ever respond to a question without asking another question? Does it bother you? No. But it does confirm my hypothesis. What hypothesis? He let out a heavy sigh, and with it, all the residual warmth from our flirty banther evaporated. " You're a shrink," he said. He might as well have accused me of being a traitor or a murder or a Kardeshian.

Regardless, they were as lovely as two bouquets of red roses Still, I remembered those hidden thorns! As a kid, they delivered a double dose of whip-ass that put more knots on my head than bumps on a toad frog. Yes, I had residual wounds and a set of T-shirts from those run-ins. The wrong wordor a misguided flirt could’ve restarted a continuum on my skull. Mary and Martha were Boss Chicks when I entered first grade. Jerry gave me big brotherly advice on how to greet beautiful girls. His Game: “Make eye contact, give off a big smile, and then tilt your cap.” Got it! I was down for a double fantasy. Well, as I approached the sisters and made the “Big Move,” unfortunately they delivered a few shots and a couple of jolts respectively to mycranium that rung every bell I had. Apparently, they didn’t like boys hitting on them at that stage of their youth. So, I learned to stay in my lane and never take any more tips from Jerry.

Love is a colorless,volatile Liquid.Love ignites n burns.Love Leaves no residue neither smoke nor ash.Love is a poison masquerading as spirit of Wine

They loved so intensely that moments of their life have been etched into the very fabric of the mansion. Some say the king designed it that way, so if one day he lost her he could come live with her residue.

You can’t be fiercely loving without also being passionate - and sometimes passionate isn’t pretty. What might seem testy is actually scar tissue, the residual effects of trauma that I lived through.

I've noticed this: when it's the first date, and you fuck, the guy hold you much better than he does the next few times. The first date, you're sort of the stand-in for whomever he loved last, before he fully realizes that you're not her, and so you get all this nice residue emotion. I felt cherished, tucked into his belly, like we'd known each other for years and I was his wonderful girl and we both slept great.

If the gods of Gorgeousness and Charm and Sexiness had a threesome, Jason Burkwell would’ve been the resulting love child.

I don’t care if it’s been five minutes or five months or five years. You’re it for me and there’s no sense in waiting.

The manners that apply specifically during courtship come to be replaced over the course of marriage by a different set of manners, embodying the residual pettiness, complaining, and faultfinding of childhood.

Death carves holes in your soul, and love fills them.

He'd been stitching a fragile cloak of half-imagined hopes, barely with the substance of thule but there all the same. It dissolved and left him with a nasty residue of shame.

When a person sees someone attractive to them, their eyes dilate twenty percent. Their brain floods with dopamine, which makes them happy. Thus, they believe it’s love. That’s a medical fact. Love doesn’t exist.

We throw ourselves into the journey and when it's done, even while having learned that all experience involves the loss of something beloved, what is ledt in the residue of memory is love.

When we sleep together, he holds me like he loves me. I've noticed this: when it's the first date, and you fuck, the guy holds you much better than he does the next few times. The first date, you're sort of a stand-in for whomever he loved last, before he fully realizes you're not her, so you get all this nice residue emotion.

I became a student of my own depressed experience, trying to unthread its causes. What was the root of all this despair? Was it psychological? (Was it Mom and Dad's fault?( Was it just temporal, a 'bad time' in my life? (When the divorce ends will the depression end with it?) Was it genetic? (Melancholy, called by many names, has run through my family for generations, along with its sad bride, Alcoholism.) Was it cultural? (Is this just the fallout of postfeminist American career girl trying to find balance in an increasingly stressful alienting urban world?) Was it astrological? (Am I so sad because I'm a thin-skinned Cancer whose major signs are all ruled by unstable Gemini?) Was it artistic? (Don't creative people always suffer from depression because we're so supersensitive and special?) Was it evolutionary? (Do I carry in me the residual panic that comes after millennia of my species' attempting to survive a brutal world?) Was it karmic? (Are all these spasms of grief just the consequences of bad behavior in previous lifetimes, the last obstacles before liberation?) Was it hormonal? Dietary? Philosophical? Seasonal? Environmental? Was I tapping into a universal yearning for God? Did I have a chemical imbalance? Or did I just need to get laid?

The feelings that still linger, decade after decade, aren’t just the residue of a love lost. They are as real as the first day I told her I loved her." ~Corbin Jones, Voice of Innocence

When it rains, it pours but that isn’t a bad thing. Take advantage of the rain as it washes away all of the residues that the side effects left behind. As you confront your side effects, walk with pride, do not turn back, face them head-on. Nothing can faze you now because the rain is clearing your path. After the rain has washed away the side effects, their powers are watered down. Therefore, they can no longer interrupt your peace, kill your joy or steal your happiness. The side effects’ time has expired. It is time to put an end once and for all to carrying everyone’s dirty load. Leave them where they lie. Let them figure out their own messes and bad decisions. Take a breather and let it go. I bet the load is so much lighter!

Love fills the empty places and flows from what was once the epicenter of the wound. And it’s the flowing that washes out the residue of the pain and makes us whole again. That’s the crazy miracle that is love. The more you pour out, the more you have to pour.

Five years ago, I said vows. And I believe in vows. I meant them, and not just when I said them out loud for an audience to hear but as a motto and a life choice. For as long as we both shall live. I hadn't anticipated the sandy flow of feeling, the yin-yang of love and dread, or the residual buildup of grievances and the slow draining of the benefit of doubt. In good times and in bad. Yes, sure, but in my naivete, I interpreted this as external; we would support each other when the world imposed and intruded. No one tells you that it's the internal that's the real challenge: those moments of decisiveness equal to taking a vow, when you feel the clawing grip of your pormises.

most of the shaping of your mind remains forever unconscious. This is called implicit memory, and it includes your expectations, models of relationships, emotional tendencies, and general outlook. Implicit memory establishes the interior landscape of your mind—what it feels like to be you—based on the slowly accumulating residues of lived experience. In

I will love you always.” My eyes squeeze shut, forcing out a few residual tears. “Please don’t ever forget it.

Blazing? Droplets of thoughts can soothe it all. Don't feel depleted. Bask in the residue. That remains!

I took on my depression like it was the fight of my life, wich of course, it was. I became a student of my own depressed experience, trying to unthread its causes. What was the root of all this dispair? Was it psychological? (Mom and Dad's fault?) Was it just temporal, a "bad time" in my life? (When the divorce ends, will the depression end with it?) Was it genetic? (Melancholy, called by many names, has run through my family for generations, along with its sad bride, Alcholisme.) Was it cultural? (Is this just the fallout of a postfeminist American career girl trying to find balance in an increasingly stressful and alienating urban world?) Was it astrological? (Am I so sad because I'm a thin-skinned cancer whose major signs are all ruled by unstable Gemini?) Was it artistic? (Don't creative people always suffer from depression because we're so supersensitive and special?) Was it evolutionary? (Do I carry in me the residual panic that come after millennia of my species' attempting to survive a brutal world?) Was it Karmic? (Are all these spasms of grief just the consequences of bad behavior in previous lifetimes, the last obstacles before liberation?) Was it hormonal? Dietary? Philosophical? Seasonal? Environmental? Did I have a chemical imbalance? Or did I just need to get laid?

Naturally she knew of him. She had her own copies of these works in the White Acre library. She had read Boehme, though she never admired him. Jacob Boehme was a sixteenth-century cobbler from Germany who had mystical visions about plants. Many people considered him an early botanist. Alma’s mother, on the other hand, had considered him a cesspool of residual medieval superstition. So there was considerable conflict of opinion surrounding Jacob Boehme. The old cobbler had believed in something he called “the signature of all things”—namely, that God had hidden clues for humanity’s betterment inside the design of every flower, leaf, fruit, and tree on earth. All the natural world was a divine code, Boehme claimed, containing proof of our Creator’s love.

Jocelyn,” said Vinnia, “you are a Weatherford. Being one comes with certain responsibilities. One of those is not falling in love with the enemy.” “Or even consorting with one,” added Spencer. “Or even looking at one…” said Nolan, and then corrected himself, “Unless you’re casting.

Words are the residue that I was there, that I loved my wife, that I kissed my children goodnight, that I sacrificed my life for them. Words are a curse. Life is a curse. Words escape life. Life escapes words. What in God's name am I? How does someone name a God? What is it to name yourself?

Innocence alone can be passionate. The innocent have no sorrow, no suffering, though they have had a thousand experiences. It is not the experiences that corrupt the mind but what they leave behind, the residue, the scars, the memories. These accumulate, pile up one on top of the other, and then sorrow begins. This sorrow is time. Where time is, innocency is not. Passion is not born of sorrow. Sorrow is experience, the experience of everyday life, the life of agony and fleeting pleasures, fears and certainties. You cannot escape from experiences, but they need not take root in the soil of the mind. These roots give rise to problems, conflicts and constant struggle. There is no way out of this but to die each day to every yesterday. The clear mind alone can be passionate. Without passion you cannot see the breeze among the leaves or the sunlight on the water. Without passion there is no love.

The smells arose from everything, everywhere, flowing together and remaining as a sickening, tantalizing discomfort. They flowed from the delicatessen shop with its uncovered trays of pickled herrings, and the small open casks of pickled gherkins and onions, dried fish and salted meat, and sweaty damp walls and floor; from the fish shop which casually defied every law of health; from the kosher butcher, and the poulterer next door, where a fine confetti of new-plucked feathers hung nearly motionless in the fetid air; and from sidewalk gutters where multitudes of flies buzzed and feasted on the heaped-up residue of fruit and vegetable barrows.

She knew where they were going. She had visited Kilmainham Gaol before, wrapped in its brooding walls lest the ghosts it housed should break free and point accusing fingers at those who used the reins of power to drive the horses of personal ambition. It was a sad place where the residue of human suffering lingered – it had no place else to go.

I was holding out hope that someday, somehow, Theo would come back. It isn't as if I've loved the same cold memory all this time. Rilke wrote, Even your not being there is warm with you. I'm in love with Theo's residual warmth. the indentation she left for me to grow around. All those living petals, never falling... I leave space for Theo to be something that's still happening to me.

All of a sudden, she was there, breaking away from the little group of women and running toward him. She raced across the space between them and threw her arms around his neck. The force of her body knocked him back a few steps as she wrapped around him like a trumpet vine on a cornstalk. He regained his footing and snaked his arms around her, holding her close. His exhaustion disappeared in a moment, erased by the incredible fact that Catherine was in his arms right here on the street in front of half the town, lifting her face to kiss him. He couldn’t refuse her offer and bent his head to cover her soft lips with his. The heat and pressure of her mouth took away all the residual anxiety and fear still floating in him and filled him with wild elation instead. After several long minutes of feasting on her mouth like a starving man, he pulled away and his eyes opened. Her tear-streaked face filled his vision. His stomach dropped. Why was she crying? What had happened to her? He was aware of the crowd of people around them. Glancing up, he saw many eyes focused on him and Catherine, mouths talking, expressions of surprise and shock. He let go of her and stepped back, although it was far too late to protect her reputation. Catherine cupped his face, drawing his attention back to her, and her lips were moving. “…don’t you? Never again!” She frowned and signed as she spoke. “Never! Understand? I love you.” Her graceful hands made the love sign, which looked as though she was offering her heart to him. At last Jim realized she was upset with him for putting himself in danger. If he’d doubted that she cared, those doubts evaporated under the force of her fury. He nodded and promised.

I have not won until I speak my words. There is residual tide that must outflow to leave me quiet abrood. Good-bye my love. Indeed it seemed you were my love that first upon the evening sands I looked into your darkening eyes: But still I'll say good-bye... Good-bye dear love who are and who are not. The bitter binding must undo that life may flow its untold course. You must be free to find your peace and I, to know my own. And so good-bye...

What mattered to me in my dispeopled kingdom, that in regard to which the disposition of my carcass was the merest and most futile of accidents, was supineness in the mind, the dulling of the self and of that residue of execrable frippery known as the non-self and even the world, for short. But man is still today, at the age of twenty-five, at the mercy of an erection, physically too, from time to time, it’s the common lot, even I was not immune, if that may be called an erection. It did not escape her naturally, women smell a [23] rigid phallus ten miles away and won­der, How on earth did he spot me from there? One is no longer oneself, on such occasions, and it is painful to be no longer oneself, even more painful if possible than when one is. For when one is one knows what to do to be less so, whereas when one is not one is any old one irredeemably. What goes by the name of love is banishment, with now and then a postcard from the homeland, such is my considered opinion, this evening.

The One You Once Loved If the man or woman you once loved Exists now without the bestowal of your affection They, having once been endowed with that love, must still command the respect of that holiness. A residue of your righteous love will forever remain etched in their souls, an unfading aura of your once sacred bond. Permit that old love to persist in your soul -- do not erase, forget or nullify its existence. By affirming rather than negating of this memory, and you will become more whole and more holy.

Have you never noticed how absorbed people look as they climb from floor to floor? So many resolutions reached, so many anxious questions to which the answers lie in wait behind the door that is about to open! Here on the stairs is the time and the place for making up your mind, that final moment for reflection before you take the plunge. As a result there appears to linger, in some of those great circular stairwells, a residue of the dreams that they have sheltered, a memory, as it were, of the meditations in which love, lust, and world-weariness fought for the hearts of all the nameless people who ever passed that way.

a mood is a state of enhanced readiness to experience a certain emotion. Where an emotion is a single note, clearly struck, hanging for a moment in the still air, a mood is the extended, nearly inaudible echo that follows. Consciousness registers a fading level of activation in the emotion circuits faintly or not at all. And so the provocative events of the day may leave us with emotional responsiveness waiting beneath our notice. If a man spills coffee on himself, his annoyance is relatively short-lived—on the order of minutes. After the conscious feeling is gone, residual activity in the anger circuits lingers. He will pass into an irritable mood—a quickness to anger, the only reflection of the waning activity in those circuits.

Beatrix was right, of course." "About what?" "That you and Leo were like a pair of ferrets, a bit rough-and-tumble in courtship." Catherine smiled sheepishly. "Beatrix is very intuitive." Poppy directed a wry glance at Dodger, who was carefully licking the last residue of egg off the saucer. "I used to think Beatrix would outgrow her obsession with animals. Now I realize it's the way her brain works. She sees hardly any difference between the animal world and the human one. I only hope she can find a man who will tolerate her individuality." "What a tactful way to put it," Catherine said, laughing. "You mean a man who won't complain about finding rabbits in his shoes or a lizard in his cigar box?" "Exactly." "She will," Catherine assured her. "Beatrix is far too loving, and worthy of being loved, to go unmarried.

The vague fear I had felt at the Verdurins’ that Albertine might leave me, had originally faded. Arriving home, I had had the feeling of being a prisoner, not at all of returning to a female captive. But the forgotten fear had gripped me much more strongly when, at the moment I told Albertine that I had been to the Verdurins’, I saw on the surface of her face a look of mysterious irritation, which indeed was not appearing there for the first time. I knew that this look was the crystallization in the flesh of long-considered grievances, of ideas which were clear to the person forming them and keeping them secret, a synthesis become visible but no more rational, which the man who gathers the precious residue on the face of the woman he loves tries in his turn, in order to understand what is going on behind it, to analyze and break down into its intellectual components.

Stephen felt himself overtaken by a climactic surge of feeling. It frightened him because he thought it would have some physical issue, in spasm or bleeding or death. Then he saw that what he felt was not an assault but a passionate affinity. It was for the rough field running down to the trees and for the path going back into the village where he could see the tower of the church: these and the forgiving distance of the sky were not separate, but part of one creation, and he too, still by any sane judgement a young man, by the repeated tiny pulsing of his blood, was one with them. He looked up and saw the sky as it would be trailed with stars under darkness, the crawling nebulae and smudged lights of infinite distance: these were not different worlds, it seemed now clear to him, but bound through the mind of creation to the shredded white clouds, the unbreathed air of May, to the soil that lay beneath the damp grass at his feet. He held tightly on to the gate and laid his head on his arms, in some residual fear that the force of binding love he felt would sweep him from the earth. He wanted to stretch out his arms and enfold in them the fields, the sky, the elms with their sounding birds; he wanted to hold them with the unending forgiveness of a father to his prodigal, errant but beloved son. Isabelle and the cruel dead of the war; his lost mother, his friend Weir: nothing was immoral or beyond redemption, all could be brought together, understood in the long perspective of forgiveness. As he clung to the wood, he wanted also to be forgiven for all he had done; he longed for the unity of the world's creation to melt his sins and anger, because his soul was joined to it. His body shook with the passion of the love that had found him, from which he had been exiled in the blood and the flesh of long killing.

What mattered to me in my dispeopled kingdom, that in regard to which the disposition of my carcass was the merest and most futile of accidents, was supineness in the mind, the dulling of the self and of that residue of execrable frippery known as the non-self and even the world, for short. But man is still today, at the age of twenty-five, at the mercy of an erection, physically too, from time to time, it’s the common lot, even I was not immune, if that may be called an erection. It did not escape her naturally, women smell a rigid phallus ten miles away and won­der, How on earth did he spot me from there? One is no longer oneself, on such occasions, and it is painful to be no longer oneself, even more painful if possible than when one is. For when one is one knows what to do to be less so, whereas when one is not one is any old one irredeemably. What goes by the name of love is banishment, with now and then a postcard from the homeland, such is my considered opinion, this evening.

Oh." She moved against him, and it was his turn to gasp. "Oh... that's quite..." She moved again and he stilled her hips with a strong hand, unwilling to trust himself if she continued her rolling motions. "Indeed," he said, suckling the tip of one breast idly. "It is. Quite." He retreated almost entirely from her passage and thrust again, a smooth, long movement that chased away the residual pain and replaced it with a spark of pleasure. "Oh... yes." "Yes?" he teased, repeating the movement. This time she met his thrust with her own and sighed. "Yes," she agreed. "My sentiments, exactly," he said, and began to move rhythmically in deep, smooth strokes designed to drive them both wild. After several long moments of his rich caresses, Callie began to move beneath him, canting her hips to increase the pressure of his thrusts. Ralston shifted to accommodate her body's request, increasing speed and force. Clenching his teeth against the pleasure of her body, so tight and hot around him. Callie began to cry out , little mewling cries of pleasure that made him wild, so real and honest was her passion.

DECEMBER 30 Joy Is Your Next Lesson Learning compassion, understanding love, and experiencing joy. That’s our purpose, our reason for being here. That’s our true mission on this planet. Learning compassion may have been difficult, because in order to feel compassion for others without judging, we had to go through difficult times ourselves. Times when despite our best efforts we couldn’t help ourselves, times when despite our searching we couldn’t find the answers. As many say, it is usually our own pain and problems that makes us compassionate. Understanding love may have taken many years, many heartbreaks, and much searching and grasping until we discovered that the key to love was our own heart. Until we discovered that love wasn’t exactly what we thought or hoped it would be. Now it’s different. And better. Don’t give up. Don’t stop now. Don’t let the residue, the pain from the early parts of your journey, stop you from going forward. We first had to learn about compassion and love in order to learn joy. The hard work is done. Now you have reached your reward. Now it is time to learn joy. DECEMBER 31 Honor the Ending “How was your trip?” a friend asked, as my trip drew to a close. I thought for a moment, then the answer came easily. “It had its ups and downs,” I said. “There were times I felt exhilarated and sure I was on track. Other days I felt lost. Confused. I’d fall into bed at night certain that this whole trip was a mistake and a waste. But I’d wake up in the morning, something would happen, and I’d see how I’d been guided all along.” The journey of a year is drawing to a close. Cherish the moments, all of them, even the ups and downs. Cherish the places you’ve visited, the people you’ve seen. Say good-bye to those whose journeys have called them someplace else. Know you can always call them back by thinking loving thoughts. Know all those you love will be there for you when you need them most. Honor the lessons you’ve learned, and the people who helped you learn them. Honor the journey your soul mapped out for you. Trust all the places you’ve been. Make a scrapbook in your heart to help you remember. Look back for a moment. Reflect in peace. Then let this year draw to a close. All parts of the journey are sacred and holy. You’ve learned that by now. Take time to honor this ending—though it’s never really the end. Go to sleep tonight. When you wake up tomorrow a new adventure will begin. Remember the words you were told when this last adventure began, the words whispered quietly to your heart: Let the journey unfold. Let it be magical. The way has been prepared. People will be expecting you. Yes, you are being led.

When I was nineteen years old, I discovered a collection of books in the Harvard library written by Jacob Boehme. Do you know of him?" Naturally she knew of him. She had her own copies of these works in the White Acre library. She had read Boehme, though she never admired him. Jacob Boehme was a sixteenth-century cobbler from Germany who had mystical visions about plants. Many people considered him an early botanist. Alma's mother, on the other hand, had considered him a cesspool of residual medieval superstition. So there was considerable conflict of opinion surrounding Jacob Boehme. The old cobbler had believed in something he called "the signature of all things"- namely, that God had hidden clues for humanity's betterment inside the design of every flower, leaf, fruit, and tree on earth. All the natural world was a divine code, Boehme claimed, containing proof of our Creator's love. That is why so many medicinal plants resembled the diseases they were meant to cure, or the organs they were able to treat. Basil, with its liver-shaped leaves, is the obvious ministration for ailments of the liver. The celandine herb, which produces a yellow sap, can be used to treat the yellow discoloration brought on by jaundice. Walnuts, shaped like brains, are helpful for headaches. Coltsfoot, which grows near cold streams, can cure the coughs and chills brought on by immersion in ice water. 'Polygonum,' with its spattering of blood-red markings on the leaves, cures bleeding wounds of the flesh.

My identity as Jewish cannot be reduced to a religious affiliation. Professor Said quoted Gramsci, an author that I’m familiar with, that, and I quote, ‘to know thyself is to understand that we are a product of the historical process to date which has deposited an infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory’. Let’s apply this pithy observation to Jewish identity. While it is tempting to equate Judaism with Jewishness, I submit to you that my identity as someone who is Jewish is far more complex than my religious affiliation. The collective inventory of the Jewish people rests on my shoulders. This inventory shapes and defines my understanding of what it means to be Jewish. The narrative of my people is a story of extraordinary achievement as well as unimaginable horror. For millennia, the Jewish people have left their fate in the hands of others. Our history is filled with extraordinary achievements as well as unimaginable violence. Our centuries-long Diaspora defined our existential identity in ways that cannot be reduced to simple labels. It was the portability of our religion that bound us together as a people, but it was our struggle to fit in; to be accepted that identified us as unique. Despite the fact that we excelled academically, professionally, industrially, we were never looked upon as anything other than Jewish. Professor Said in his book, Orientalism, examined how Europe looked upon the Orient as a dehumanized sea of amorphous otherness. If we accept this point of view, then my question is: How do you explain Western attitudes towards the Jews? We have always been a convenient object of hatred and violent retribution whenever it became convenient. If Europe reduced the Orient to an essentialist other, to borrow Professor Said’s eloquent language, then how do we explain the dehumanizing treatment of Jews who lived in the heart of Europe? We did not live in a distant, exotic land where the West had discursive power over us. We thought of ourselves as assimilated. We studied Western philosophy, literature, music, and internalized the same culture as our dominant Christian brethren. Despite our contribution to every conceivable field of human endeavor, we were never fully accepted as equals. On the contrary, we were always the first to be blamed for the ills of Western Europe. Two hundred thousand Jews were forcibly removed from Spain in 1492 and thousands more were forcibly converted to Christianity in Portugal four years later. By the time we get to the Holocaust, our worst fears were realized. Jewish history and consciousness will be dominated by the traumatic memories of this unspeakable event. No people in history have undergone an experience of such violence and depth. Israel’s obsession with physical security; the sharp Jewish reaction to movements of discrimination and prejudice; an intoxicated awareness of life, not as something to be taken for granted but as a treasure to be fostered and nourished with eager vitality, a residual distrust of what lies beyond the Jewish wall, a mystical belief in the undying forces of Jewish history, which ensure survival when all appears lost; all these, together with the intimacy of more personal pains and agonies, are the legacy which the Holocaust transmits to the generation of Jews who have grown up under its shadow. -Fictional debate between Edward Said and Abba Eban.

With an obscure hesitation one steps into the day and its frame and its costume. Between the puzzlement and its summary abandonment, between the folds of waking consciousness and their subsequent limitation, is a possible city. Solitude, hotels, aging, love, hormones, alcohol, illness – these drifting experiences open it a little. Sometimes prolonged reading holds it ajar. Another’s style of consciousness inflects one’s own; an odd syntactic manner, a texture of embellishment, pause. A new mode of rest. I can feel physiologically haunted by a style. It’s why I read ideally, for the structured liberation from the personal, yet the impersonal inflection can persist outside the text, beyond the passion of readerly empathy, a most satisfying transgression that arrives only inadvertently, never by force of intention. As if seized by a fateful kinship, against all the odds of sociology, the reader psychically assumes the cadence of the text. She sheds herself. This description tends towards a psychological interpretation of linguistics, but the experience is also spatial. I used to drive home from my lover’s apartment at 2 a.m., 3 a.m. This was Vancouver in 1995. A zone of light-industrial neglect separated our two neighbourhoods. Between them the stretched-out city felt abandoned. My residual excitement and relaxation would extend outwards from my body and the speeding car, towards the dilapidated warehouses, the shut storefronts, the distant container yards, the dark exercise studios, the pools of sulphur light, towards a low-key dereliction. I would feel pretty much free. I was a driver, not a pronoun, not a being with breasts and anguish. I was neither with the lover nor alone. I was suspended in a nonchalance. My cells were at ease. I doted on nothing.

The driver had recently scraped an 'AMRAK is Love' decal from his back window, leaving a sticky residue of his former beliefs.

Coexistence means so much more than we realize. It means that even though we were taught to convert others, to close down their temples, we instead choose to accept and defend others' right to worship. It means that though we have residual fear from conditioning, we choose to go against it in the name of love. It means that we acknowledge that our respective societies taught us to consider someone different to us in race, gender or religion as the other, but we embrace everyone as a sister, a brother. And, finally, it means that even when our egos tell us that we are betraying or hiding our beliefs, we realize that any prejudices that lurk within us were taught to us; and observing the thoughts without believing them is the key to liberation.

The Night rains hot tar : The night rains hot tar into my throat, the taste is good to my heart’s tongue, into my heart the night pours down its moon like a yellow molten residue of dung: the night pours down the sea into my throat my heart drains off its blood in love and pain: the night pours a Negro song into my throat, bloodred is the color of this rain: like a bowstring of song across my throat, the wind through the pine-trees behind the shack, the loneliness i wear like a torn coat, the ghetto-terror kneeling thief-like on my back, the scream of a black man being burned alive, a black woman raped, blood trickling down her thigh, the anguish of her children, their anger to survive, the coal dust in their veins to come to fire before they die!

Before long, people who have entered the valley of humility feel themselves back in the uplands of joy and commitment. They’ve thrown themselves into work, made new friends, and cultivated new loves. They realize, with a shock, that they’ve traveled a long way since the first days of their crucible. They turn around and see how much ground they have left behind. Such people don’t come out healed; they come out different. They find a vocation or calling. They commit themselves to some long obedience and dedicate themselves to some desperate lark that gives life purpose. Each phase of this experience has left a residue on such a person’s soul. The experience has reshaped their inner core and given it great coherence, solidity, and weight.

He let out a heavy sigh, and with it, all the residual warmth from our flirty banter evaporated. "You're a shrink" he said. He might as well have accused me of being a traitor or a murderer or a Kardashian.

Red wine and Hennessy She fell out of her bottle when she fell into love, cup running over, overflowing emotions in glass- red stained palet, on a pallet on the grass, to a quilt on the floor -affixed between lips and red lipstick on a shirt that he wore. A familiar place, she know she's been here before Reminiscent of the evening On his shirt that she tore ............ Drop by drop, puddle in glass getting lower- impressions in her gut, rim of her glass, hour glass figure moves counter clockwise - while absorbing the contents of merlot. Hard liquor and fine wine ............. Red Wine and Hennessy A wicked twist on some champagne tips French nails, manicures over grapes Whoever said wine and liquor don't mix? Last night I had six Bottle caps, corks, bedazzled juice Merlot was her name - slim waist - good taste slinger neck, red lace. Long stem, pedestal - hands embraced her face ............. room temperature, her body temperature ... personality of two, she's mellow and chill... aged to perfection- pop the seal- watch the erection ... splatters on the floor- covers the rug, Residue of red lipstick- Merlot stained lips match the kiss on his neck ............ Chasing fantasy through the Red Sea While chasing that with a white BC How much will she pour- how much will she drink How much more before her ship sinks ........... A full body lush, blackberry crush Medium sized Bordeaux Intense velvety plum I asked her where she's from She said she's international She's longer thinking rational .......... Sips in sync with blinking eyes She sips too much to realize Every time you pour into me, my bottle gets more empty- Glass falling to the floor She staggers to the door Glass shatters her feet She stumbles to her seat She's still asking for more But she falls to the floor Red lipstick in the mud She covers up the blood ............ She lays in her wine She forgot about the time Clock on the wall Footsteps in the hall Pounding in her head She rushes to the bed ......... She lays motionless ... but her head is racing Her heart is pacing Her lungs are gasping - air, she needs air Rolls to her side, brings her self to sit up She gags and gags until She throws it all up- ........... Wakes up the next morning Dazed and confused She's laying in a bed That she's not used to She moves slowly, where did everyone go? She checks the time- it's a quarter pass 4 sounds on the other side of the door Are Muffled by the sound of a knock at the door ........... Looks around for her little red dress Notices a blotch - a red stain on her breast Lipstick smeared an accessory to her mess She reached for her clothes and saw a note on the desk. .......... Dearly beloved, I want to see you again I'd love to have to back I think we make a great blend I tried to wake you Because I had to go And Oh by the way, my name is merlot "Little Black Bird

I combed through my body, my mind, searching for any residual remains of heartbreaking memories, making peace with them, and often forgiving myself for the role I played. I emptied myself of pain and welcomed new love. I painted it away, I walked it away, I hiked it away, I sang it away, I traveled it away, and I lived my life discovering every reason to pour love within myself. I did everything I could to unclog every inch of pain that may have been left in my body and in my mind.

Family and friends help us live our values of connection, loyalty, and responsibility. They need you and you need them, so they are clearly far more important than a mere “residual beneficiary,” a term I first heard in an Economics 101 class. In business, a residual beneficiary is the chump who gets whatever is left over when a company is liquidated—typically, not much. In life, our loved ones deserve better, and yet, if we’re not careful with how we plan our time, residual beneficiaries are exactly what they become.

Only those who are worthy. Who have enough energy. There is no judgment but that: whether a soul possesses enough residual power to make a hearty meal, both for myself and for the Dead Gate. As their souls pass through the Dead Gate, I take a … bite or two.” Hunt cringed inwardly. Maybe he had been too hasty in deeming the being before him not evil. The Under-King went on, “The rituals were all invented by you. Your ancestors. To endure the horror of the offering.” “But Danika was here. She answered me.” Bryce’s voice broke. “She was here. She and all of the newly dead from the past several centuries. Just long enough that their living descendants and loved ones either forget or don’t come asking. They dwell here until then in relative comfort—unless they make themselves a nuisance and I decide to send them into the Gate sooner. But when the dead are forgotten, their names no longer whispered on the wind … then they are herded through the Gate to become firstlight. Or secondlight, as it is called when the power comes from the dead. Ashes to ashes and all that.” “The Sleeping City is a lie?” Hunt asked. His mother’s face flashed before him. “A comforting one, as I have said.” The Under-King’s voice again became sorrowful. “One for your benefit.” “And the Asteri know about this?” Hunt demanded. “I would never presume to claim what the holy ones know or don’t know.” “Why are you telling us any of this?” Bryce blanched with horror. “Because he’s not letting us leave here alive,” Hunt breathed. And their souls wouldn’t live on, either. The light vanished entirely, and the voice of the Under-King echoed around them. “That is the first intelligent thing you’ve said.

i love like flowers and fire… i don't know any other way. soft and vulnerable, and wild and burning… with my heart broken. wide. open. and even though he came in like wildfire, he was just. broken. and hardened. and filled with an ugliness raging inside of him and he thought that if he raged hard enough against me that he could rage an ugliness out from inside of me too. then he could say, “see, it's you.” that he could be so hard to love that he could make me feel hard to love too. but i just softly left the room. a graceful exit. and i wrote all my feelings down to shed his hardened residue. and to remind myself of all the ways that there are such beautiful and tender things in me… always.

With a sigh, I whisked the moisture off my cheeks, then studied Narian’s handsome features, creating a portrait in my mind. I traced his cheekbones and jaw, lingering over his lips. Impulsively, I leaned down to kiss him and his eyelids flicked open. “I will always love you, Alera,” he murmured, momentarily regaining clarity. “And I will always love you.” I curled up beside him, my arm across his chest, willing him to stay with me for as long as possible. I continually fought against drowsiness, but exhaustion and grief eventually got the best of me, and I drifted off to sleep. Someone was shaking my shoulder and I slowly came awake to see London crouched down beside me. I bolted upright, then reached out to touch his face, certain I was seeing a ghost. “Alera, it’s all right. I’m here to bring you safely home.” I nodded, then shifted onto my knees, my voice urgent. “The High Priestess has poisoned Narian. She doesn’t want him to fight against her if she sends reinforcements to Hytanica.” London placed a hand upon Narian’s chest, feeling for a heartbeat, for the rise and fall of breathing, for warmth. “He’s still alive,” he told me. “How long ago was he poisoned?” “About ten hours now. He can’t have much time left. According to what the High Priestess told me about the poison, he should already be dead.” “Listen to me. He may still have some of Nantilam’s healing power inside of him.” “From when the Overlord tried to kill him?” London nodded and hope surged within me. It had been the residual effect of Nantilam’s healing abilities that had enabled the deputy captain to withstand the Overlord’s torture. “That’s probably why his dying is prolonged,” London continued. “With any luck, she may have miscalculated what it will take to kill him. But we need to help him fight, Alera.” “How?” London retrieved his water flask and bedroll from his horse, handing them to me. “Get as much water as possible into him, to dilute the toxin in his bloodstream, and we’ll cover him with all the blankets and cloaks we have. He’s fevered, so let’s help his body sweat out some of the poison.” I began to cover Narian while London added wood to the fire. Then he removed his own cloak and tossed it to me. “I’m going to gather some herbs that might help. I’ve learned a few things about Cokyrian compounds over the years, knowledge that I’m guessing the High Priestess would like to take away from me about now. You stay here and care for him as you have been doing. And, Alera, keep talking to him. He is strong and will fight to hear the sound of your voice--fight to come back to you.” “I think the High Priestessis in love with you, London.” “Just proves folly knows no limit.

Justification is the work of an instant, but growth in holiness takes time. When the wound of original sin is healed and personal sins are forgiven, we are embraced by God’s love; but even divine love has to overcome the residue of our sinfulness, the acquired and experienced resistance to intimacy with God.

The idea that traumatic residues—or unresolved stories—can be inherited is groundbreaking.

To yearn for love is for kingdom reality to residue in your psyche

Let's see what we have in the larder. We have eye of newt and toe of frog, carbon-crisp residue of manticore loin, a beaker of all-natural belladonna extract, some wolfbane, some romaine, a poteen of ptomaine, and a few limp radishes in butter, pinched from the platter left out for Marat after his bath, which he never got to since he died therein. Let's have cheerios." "I don't know what cheerios are," said Cat. "They haven't been invented yet. You'll love them.

Jasmine had endured enough parochial schooling before middle school to have a residual attachment to the beautiful parts of believing, the certainty of knowing one is loved by something beyond comprehension, but also a niggling fear of those who believed too much in anything they could not touch. Believers were the sort to wave pictures of dead fetuses at her when she went to her gynecologist for a checkup.

By the pond, what whiffs, what sniffs? The residue of stag and duck, Heron and otter, murky frog. Money smells, but not enough.

INSIDE OF MY KISS   Drawing my fingers and hands down from the lower portion of her neck passed her stomach I kiss her once more. Gradually guiding her hands down my chest with our fingers partly intertwined I drag them all the way down in an oily residue that slides like warm agave. I watch as her eyes soften, her mouth becoming the place for my lips to escape to. Little spatters of paint graze our legs and feet as she desperately tries to find refuge inside of my kiss, our bodies soon becoming one. Naked and partially covered in paint we move across the floor over a large piece of canvas that captures every stir and motion. As paint and sweat smear across this surface giving memory to our intense romance an organic and spontaneous masterpiece is made. Again I surrender myself inside of her breathtaking kiss that warms me. Smudged into this colorful muck our love is made once again and to a tune that never grows tired. Here in this place where time stands still there is nothing that can take the place of this bond and this passion that continues to become more with each kiss. Taken by the instinctive beauty of solicitude we now lead each other in poetic faith. Inside the splendor of each breath and each kiss do we make all that there is to make, our love only intensifying within each passing moment.

Sometimes loving a person as fragile as Opal made my chest ache as badly as the residual from taking a death curse. But I would never trade that pain for an easier time. Not ever.

If you’re going through a breakup, so long as your ex wasn’t abusive, talk to them if you want, but address things as needed. Form a totally new relationship with them after the breakup, one defined by different rules. If you avoided difficult conversations when you were together, don’t do so with them now, in your new, refashioned relationship. Be honest with yourself, and be brave. If you have residual feelings for your ex, it’s okay to remain in contact with them, but make sure to set firm boundaries. Have a conversation with them (and yourself) about what is unfolding. Don’t ignore it, even if your ex wants to.

Love is like water. No matter how you cut it, slice it, beat it, or blow it into ten trillion droplets, give it a few minutes and it will all come back together again. Like nothing ever happened. No scar. No shrapnel. Just one giant body of water. Clear. Clean. Cool. Love fills the empty places and flows from what was once the epicenter of the wound. And it’s the flowing that washes out the residue of the pain and makes us whole again. That’s the crazy miracle that is love. The more you pour out, the more you have to pour. I don’t understand it, I just know it’s true.

When porn is in a marriage, even the residue from past use that has stopped, sexual intimacy is replaced with sexual technique and the goal becomes performing rather than loving.

Handcrafted Humanity Sonnet 81 If a tradition endorses hate and mistrust, It’s the tradition that we must reject not people. If a heritage endorses division and discrimination, It's the heritage that we must reject not people. If an ancestor passes on bigotry and barbarism, It’s the ancestor that we must reject not people. If a bible teaches phobia and separatism, It’s the bible that we must reject not people. If a messiah preaches blindness and conspiracy, It's the messiah that we must reject not people. If God commands oppression and occupation, It’s the God that we must reject not people. Above all commandment, love is the highest truth. Anything that divides love is a stoneage residue.

I’m not easy to love. There’s too much trauma, too much anxiety and residual pain in my blood for any of this to be easy. I struggle enough to love myself some days. My impulse is to lash out—don my armor and rally hard when the world’s working against me.

As I left Janis's sunny London garden, I marveled at the strength of her optimism that rose above the residual sadness, at the spirit of this woman who still insists on loving life, who still says, "It's called life-and it's short. Live it!" (pg.174)

With a break in the mother-child bond among siblings, each child might express his or her disconnection with the mother differently. One child might become a people pleaser, fearing that if he’s not good, or he makes waves, he’ll lose connection with people. Another child, believing that connection is never hers to have in the first place, might become argumentative and create conflict to push away the people close to her. Another child might isolate and have little contact with people at all. I’ve noticed that if several siblings have breaks in the mother-child bond, they’ll often express anger or jealousy, or feel disconnected from one another. For example, an older child might resent the child born later, perceiving that the younger child received the love that he or she did not get. Because the hippocampus—that part of the brain involved in creating memories—isn’t fully operational until after the age of two, the older child may not consciously remember being held, fed, or cuddled by the mother, but remembers the younger child receiving their mother’s love. In response, the older child, feeling slighted, can unconsciously blame the younger child for getting what he or she did not. And then, of course, there are some children who don’t seem to carry any family trauma at all. For these children, it’s quite possible that a successful bond was established with the mother and/or father, and this connection helped to immunize the child from carrying entanglements from the past. Perhaps a window of time opened in which the mother was able to give more to one particular child and not the others. Perhaps the parents’ relationship improved. Perhaps the mother experienced a special connection with one child, but couldn’t connect deeply with the others. Younger children often, though not always, seem to do a bit better than first children, or only children, who seem to carry a bigger portion of unfinished business from the family history. When it comes to siblings and inherited family trauma, there are no hard and fast rules governing how each child is affected. Many variables, in addition to birth order and gender, can influence the choices siblings make and the lives they lead. Even though it may appear from the outside that one sibling is unscathed by trauma, while another is encumbered, my clinical experience gives me a different perspective: Most of us carry at least some residue from our family history. However, many intangibles also enter into the equation and can influence how deeply entrenched family traumas remain. These intangibles include self-awareness, the ability to self-soothe, and having a powerful internal healing experience.

Can I put my arm around you?” Even while his eyes scanned, they held a gleam of merriment. “You’re talking. I said don’t talk to me.” Shea tried sticking her nose in the air, but it felt ridiculous, and she dissolved into undignified giggles. His arm curved around her slender waist and locked her under his shoulder. “I am sorry. I did not mean to speak when you asked me not to. Turn here. I’m going to have to carry you up.” “Don’t talk. You always get your way when you talk.” She walked with him a few more yards and stopped, staring up a sheer cliff face that seemed to go up forever. There had been no division between the forest and the rock face to warn her. “Up what? Not that.” The dark, malevolent feeling had faded away. Whoever it was no longer was watching them. She could tell. “I feel another argument coming on.” His mocking amusement might not have shown on his face, but she could feel it in her mind. Jacques simply lifted her and tossed her over his shoulder. “No way, you wild man. You aren’t Tarzan. I don’t like heights. Put me down.” “Close your eyes. Who is Tarzan? Not another male, I hope.” The wind rushed over her body, and she could feel them moving fast, so fast the world seemed to blur. She closed her eyes and clutched at him, afraid to do anything else. His laughter was happy and carefree, and it warmed her heart, dispelling any residue of fear she carried. It was a miracle to her that he could laugh, that he was happy. Tarzan is the ultimate male. He swings through trees and carries his woman off into the jungle. He patterns himself after me. She nuzzled his back. He tries. He could hear the love in her voice, the tenderness, and his heart turned over. They had a long way to go before knowing one another fully, before accepting one another, but the love between them was growing stronger with every moment they were together.

No way, you wild man. You aren’t Tarzan. I don’t like heights. Put me down.” “Close your eyes. Who is Tarzan? Not another male, I hope.” The wind rushed over her body, and she could feel them moving fast, so fast the world seemed to blur. She closed her eyes and clutched at him, afraid to do anything else. His laughter was happy and carefree, and it warmed her heart, dispelling any residue of fear she carried. It was a miracle to her that he could laugh, that he was happy. Tarzan is the ultimate male. He swings through trees and carries his woman off into the jungle. He patterns himself after me. She nuzzled his back. He tries. He could hear the love in her voice, the tenderness, and his heart turned over. They had a long way to go before knowing one another fully, before accepting one another, but the love between them was growing stronger with every moment they were together.

When the bell rings she hurries up to me with more than twenty sheets of paper. She’s Indian—Hidatsa, maybe, or Sioux—and the other children let her pass as if she were invisible. The morning star dances in a red circle, singing a song about his girlfriend Sheila; the angel Gabriel stands before Mary, his blue wings ablaze with stars. His mouth is open wide and notes are coming out, each one a different color. A woman with green hair holds her hands up to the sky and says: These are secret words, Say them after me. May all the plants and flowers rise And all people rise from death. I look up from the paper: a dusty shelf, a starfish in a jar caked with dust beside dusty petri dishes. I see shades of blue: the globe cerulean, the sky bleached out. And out the window, above the children’s heads, topsoil, the residue of ancient oceans, swirling like a thumbprint in the playground, wind pushing the empty swings. “So many poems,” I say, smiling at the girl. “You must love to write.” She shifts from foot to foot and weaves her hands in air. “I don’t have paper at home,” she says, “so I keep them in my head. That’s where they live until I write them down.

their names in the annual list of donors. As I walked away from her, I wryly thought: “The lord loves a happy giver!” This dream figure thus seemed to represent symbolically a bit of day residue from my waking reality. However, something profound happened in that lucid dream. For the first time, I wondered whether

Shannon thought about all the childhood diseases that had been eradicated, but what good did it do? A child's life could still be wiped away in an instant. Why did modern people presume that they would die only in old age? Previous generations hadn't made such a presumption. She also thought about the opportunities of motherhood that were now lost to her. She wished she had said and done more to confirm Marzieh's positive sense of self. She wondered if Marzieh understood how much her mother loved her. On the fifth day things began to improve. Hope was a tiny red fish wiggling through a wide, black, slow-moving river under a dark sky. Shannon leaned over the bow of an old, splintered rowboat adrift in the water in order to greet it.

When I saw that screen light up that day in the Merrill Lynch offices, I lost any residual doubt that Bloomberg could make it. We had picked just the right project. It was big enough to be useful, small enough to be possible. Start with a small piece; fulfill one goal at a time, on time. Do it with all things in life. Sit down and learn to read one-syllable words. If you try to read Chaucer in elementary school, you’ll never accomplish anything. You can’t jump to the end game right away, in computers, politics, love, or any other aspect of life.

I was the one carrying the burden of emotional residue. He had no idea what was happening

When you align Earth with God, when you stand between the Below and the Above and encourage yourself to accept each, embrace both and become both, you begin to reach a deeper layer of conscious consciousness. Let yourself be curious about this moment and remember where you're juggling the Above and Below inside. Tell where you are most associated with Source energies. How do you respond to every manifestation? How do you build equilibrium in your body and in your work, externally? •       Just imagine. You are practically straddling these two universes even when you're reading those words. Within one glorious shape you are the above and below. Now let yourself feel that strength, that connection. Let your hands open and imagine the blinding stream of eternal white light streaming through all the entities flowing through and into the bottom of your feet, from the middle of the Moon, through Gaia and the great Earth Star, through the Rot and residual chakras, through the Crown to the Soul Star and beyond, to the farthest worlds. •       Then see the very top of your head open to the sky, causing the bright stream of celestial light energy to return from the farthest reaches of the universe through the star systems and constellations, down through the Earth's atmosphere and into the chakras of your Soul Star and Earth Star, through the central column, down through the lower chakras and back... here. Here in the womb of the Mother; here in the uppermost realms of Gaia; here, where mortals live, know, grow, love, laugh, lose and discover. In this place energy becomes matter. •       Ye are here. This is. You can relax here, be free, linked and be able to release no energy in your holy service any more. Say, "Guardian Angels, bless us as we combine the beauty and wisdom of the upper and lower worlds, softly or openly. Bring us peace as we stand among the worlds and broaden our consciousness to reflect universal love and unity. Amen, A'ho, So it is. "• Take a deep breath to finish this induction. Imagine, on the exhale, lowering a huge golden anchor down behind you into the Earth. Feel the foundation like you do, as it reinforces and encourages you. Let yourself rest here, knowing you're safe, whole and fine. Those are the Root Chakra presents. May they still do you well.

It’s not easy being part of the body of Christ. Christ is vulnerable. He can be hurt. Like God, he can weep. Whatever it may mean for the Father and the Son to be all-powerful, it clearly includes the power to “shed forth their tears as the rain upon the mountains” (Moses 7:28). It includes the power to suffer, to endure loss and catastrophe and disappointment and still be God. As Christ showed Enoch—to Enoch’s astonishment—“the God of heaven looked upon the residue of the people, and he wept” (v. 28). God wept because he commanded his children that “they should love one another, and that they should choose me, their Father; but behold, they are without affection, and they hate their own blood” (v. 33). God was wounded by his love for a people that had none.

He loved the shop, the smells of the naphthas and benzenes, the ammonias, all the alkalis and fats, all the solvents and gritty lavas, the silken detergents and ultimate soaps, like the smells, he decided of flesh itself, of release, the disparate chemistries of pore and sweat—a sweat shop—the strange wooly-smelling acids that collected in armpits and atmosphered pubic hair, the flameless combustion of urine and gabardine mixing together to create all the body’s petty suggestive alimentary toxins. The sexuality of it. The men’s garments one kind, the women’s another, confused, deflected, masked by residual powders, by the oily invisible resins of deodorant and perfume, by the concocted flower and the imagined fruit—by all fabricated flavor. And the hanging in the air, too—where would they go?—dirt, the thin, exiguous human clays, divots, ash and soils, dust devils of being.

There is one thing I know for sure and I address this topic in a later chapter, as well. Demons love to masquerade as dead people and deceive the living as if it is their loved ones. Demons are masters of deception.  They also know the art of residual and intelligent haunting, which I will explain in a later chapter.

A growl rips free of my chest as I grip her hair. “Feckin’ Christ Jesus,” I groan. Her lips go still on my pulse. … Shit. I immediately loosen the fist tangled in her locks. Did I do something wrong? Something definitely seems wrong. It’s obvious in the way she stiffens. “What did you say?” she whispers, her breath hot on my skin. Fuck. Fuck. What did I do? Was it the whole thou shalt not use the Lord’s name in vain business? Maybe Lark is super religious. I can’t remember if she or Sloane mentioned if the boarding school was some strict Catholic thing. Nuns. Were there nuns? I swallow. “Uh, I said ‘feckin’ Christ Jesus.’” “Growlier,” Lark snaps. “Feckin’ Christ Jesus.” There’s a single heartbeat of stillness in the world. And then Lark has backed away out of reach, the heat of her body gone, a chill left behind on my skin. Both of her hands cover her mouth but they can’t mask the shock in her eyes. Shock and … fury. “Oh my fucking God,” she hisses into her fingers. “What …? Was it the Jesus?” “No. No, it was not ‘the Jesus,’” she says with air quotes and a sneer as she leans close enough to jab a single finger into my chest. “It was ‘the Batman.’ The Budget Batman.” Lark takes a step back. Crosses her arms. Raises a single brow. My eyes narrow to thin slits. The words come out as a venomous hiss when I say, “Blunder Barbie.” “Oh. My. God. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod,” Lark says, flapping her hands like she’s trying to get any residue of me off of her. “You had your tongue in my mouth.” “I’d hate to remind us both, Blunder Barbie, but you kissed me.” “And you let me. You fucking knew it was me.” “Clearly, I did not, or I would have taken my chances with the fire escape.” “There is no fire escape.” “Pre-feckin’-cisely.” Lark rolls her eyes before they sharpen on me in a lethal glare. “You are such a liar. You were all up in my face that night. With a flashlight. One that you smacked on my head.” “Your face was plastered with makeup. And I didn’t smack—” “My concussed head. Where I needed fucking stitches which I never got because I had to walk home, thankyouverymuch. And then you growled at me like some rabid trash panda that was about to gnaw my leg off and tossed me in the trunk of your car, you fucking psycho.” “Oh I’m a feckin’ psycho, am I? You’re the one who jumped from a moving vehicle after you rammed some poor bloke into a lake and then fake teared up when I dropped his blimmin’ body at your feet. And they weren’t even good fake tears. They were sarcasm tears,” I snarl. I take a step closer and bend to meet her eye level, dabbing my eyes as I clear my throat for my best candy-sweet vocal impression. “Boo-hoo, I’m Blunder Barbie and I just feckin’ killed a man. My bad. But don’t worry, I’ll just get someone else to fix it so I can toddle on back to my perfect little life.