Rip Loved Ones Quotes

Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.

Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love and dared to imagine a new way of living—one without massacres and torn throats and bonfires of the fallen, without revenants or bastard armies or children ripped from their mothers’ arms to take their turn in the killing and dying. Once, the lovers lay entwined in the moon’s secret temple and dreamed of a world that was a like a jewel-box without a jewel—a paradise waiting for them to find it and fill it with their happiness. This was not that world.

Our love is rare. It’s one I can’t abandon, even if I tried. When she screams, an identical one rips through me. When she cries, my world rains with grief. When she loves, I truly, truly fly.

We are all a volume on a shelf of a library, a story unto ourselves, never possibly described with one word or even very accurately with thousands. A person is never as quiet or unrestrained as they seem, or as bad or good, as vulnerable or as strong, as sweet or as fiesty; we are thickly layered, page upon lying page, behind simple covers. And love - it is not the book itself, but the binding. It can rip us apart or hold us together.

Have you ever been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life… You give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like "maybe we should just be friends" or "how very perceptive" turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love.

I had done everything – everything for that love. I had ripped myself to shreds, I had killed innocents and debased myself, and he had sat beside Amarantha on that throne. And he couldn’t do anything, hadn’t risked it – hadn’t risked being caught until there was only one night left, and all he’d wanted to do wasn’t free me, but fuck me. And when Amarantha had broken me, when she had snapped my bones and made my blood boil in its veins, he’d just knelt and begged her. He hadn’t tried to kill her, hadn’t crawled for me. Yes, he’d fought for me – but I’d fought harder for him.

I like storms. Thunder torrential rain, puddles, wet shoes. When the clouds roll in, I get filled with this giddy expectation. Everything is more beautiful in the rain. Don't ask me why. But it’s like this whole other realm of opportunity. I used to feel like a superhero, riding my bike over the dangerously slick roads, or maybe an Olympic athlete enduring rough trials to make it to the finish line. On sunny days, as a girl, I could still wake up to that thrilled feeling. You made me giddy with expectation, just like a symphonic rainstorm. You were a tempest in the sun, the thunder in a boring, cloudless sky. I remember I’d shovel in my breakfast as fast as I could, so I could go knock on your door. We’d play all day, only coming back for food and sleep. We played hide and seek, you’d push me on the swing, or we’d climb trees. Being your sidekick gave me a sense of home again. You see, when I was ten, my mom died. She had cancer, and I lost her before I really knew her. My world felt so insecure, and I was scared. You were the person that turned things right again. With you, I became courageous and free. It was like the part of me that died with my mom came back when I met you, and I didn’t hurt if I knew I had you. Then one day, out of the blue, I lost you, too. The hurt returned, and I felt sick when I saw you hating me. My rainstorm was gone, and you became cruel. There was no explanation. You were just gone. And my heart was ripped open. I missed you. I missed my mom. What was worse than losing you, was when you started to hurt me. Your words and actions made me hate coming to school. They made me uncomfortable in my own home. Everything still hurts, but I know none of it is my fault. There are a lot of words that I could use to describe you, but the only one that includes sad, angry, miserable, and pitiful is “coward.” I a year, I’ll be gone, and you’ll be nothing but some washout whose height of existence was in high school. You were my tempest, my thunder cloud, my tree in the downpour. I loved all those things, and I loved you. But now? You’re a fucking drought. I thought that all the assholes drove German cars, but it turns out that pricks in Mustangs can still leave scars.

I want you to tell me about every person you’ve ever been in love with. Tell me why you loved them, then tell me why they loved you. Tell me about a day in your life you didn’t think you’d live through. Tell me what the word home means to you and tell me in a way that I’ll know your mother’s name just by the way you describe your bedroom when you were eight. See, I want to know the first time you felt the weight of hate, and if that day still trembles beneath your bones. Do you prefer to play in puddles of rain or bounce in the bellies of snow? And if you were to build a snowman, would you rip two branches from a tree to build your snowman arms or would leave your snowman armless for the sake of being harmless to the tree? And if you would, would you notice how that tree weeps for you because your snowman has no arms to hug you every time you kiss him on the cheek? Do you kiss your friends on the cheek? Do you sleep beside them when they’re sad even if it makes your lover mad? Do you think that anger is a sincere emotion or just the timid motion of a fragile heart trying to beat away its pain? See, I wanna know what you think of your first name, and if you often lie awake at night and imagine your mother’s joy when she spoke it for the very first time. I want you to tell me all the ways you’ve been unkind. Tell me all the ways you’ve been cruel. Tell me, knowing I often picture Gandhi at ten years old beating up little boys at school. If you were walking by a chemical plant where smokestacks were filling the sky with dark black clouds would you holler “Poison! Poison! Poison!” really loud or would you whisper “That cloud looks like a fish, and that cloud looks like a fairy!” Do you believe that Mary was really a virgin? Do you believe that Moses really parted the sea? And if you don’t believe in miracles, tell me — how would you explain the miracle of my life to me? See, I wanna know if you believe in any god or if you believe in many gods or better yet what gods believe in you. And for all the times that you’ve knelt before the temple of yourself, have the prayers you asked come true? And if they didn’t, did you feel denied? And if you felt denied, denied by who? I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirror on a day you’re feeling good. I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirror on a day you’re feeling bad. I wanna know the first person who taught you your beauty could ever be reflected on a lousy piece of glass. If you ever reach enlightenment will you remember how to laugh? Have you ever been a song? Would you think less of me if I told you I’ve lived my entire life a little off-key? And I’m not nearly as smart as my poetry I just plagiarize the thoughts of the people around me who have learned the wisdom of silence. Do you believe that concrete perpetuates violence? And if you do — I want you to tell me of a meadow where my skateboard will soar. See, I wanna know more than what you do for a living. I wanna know how much of your life you spend just giving, and if you love yourself enough to also receive sometimes. I wanna know if you bleed sometimes from other people’s wounds, and if you dream sometimes that this life is just a balloon — that if you wanted to, you could pop, but you never would ‘cause you’d never want it to stop. If a tree fell in the forest and you were the only one there to hear — if its fall to the ground didn’t make a sound, would you panic in fear that you didn’t exist, or would you bask in the bliss of your nothingness? And lastly, let me ask you this: If you and I went for a walk and the entire walk, we didn’t talk — do you think eventually, we’d… kiss? No, wait. That’s asking too much — after all, this is only our first date.

They said love made you strong, but in Louise's opinion it made you weak. It corkscrewed into your heart and you couldn't get it out again, not without ripping your heart to pieces.

BLUE SWEATER Bom Bom... Bom Bom... Bom Bom... Do you hear that? That's the sound of my heart beating... Bom Bom... Bom Bom... Bom Bom... Do you hear that? That's the sound of your heart beating. It was the first day of October. I was wearing my blue sweater, you know the one I bought at Dillard’s? The one with a double knitted hem and holes in the ends of the sleeves that I could poke my thumbs through when it was cold but I didn't feel like wearing gloves? It was the same sweater you said made my eyes look like reflections of the stars on the ocean. You promised to love me forever that night... and boy did you ever! It was the first day of December this time. I was wearing my blue sweater, you know the one I bought at Dillard’s? The one with a double knitted hem and holes in the ends of the sleeves that I could poke my thumbs through when it was cold but I didn't feel like wearing gloves? It was the same sweater you said made my eyes look like reflections of the stars on the ocean. I told you I was three weeks late You said it was fate. You promised to love me forever that night... and boy did you ever! It was the first day of May. I was wearing my blue sweater, although this time the double stitched hem was worn and the strength of each thread tested as they were pulled tight against my growing belly. You know the one. The same one I bought at Dillard’s? The one with holes in the ends of the sleeves that I could poke my thumbs through when it was cold but I didn't feel like wearing gloves? It was the same sweater you said made my eyes look like reflections of the stars on the ocean. The SAME sweater you RIPPED off of my body as you shoved me to the floor, calling me a whore , telling me you didn't love me anymore. Bom Bom... Bom Bom... Bom Bom... Do you hear that? That's the sound of my heart beating. Bom Bom... Bom Bom... Bom Bom... Do you hear that? That's the sound of your heart beating. (There is a long silence as she clasps her hands to her stomach, tears streaming down her face) Do you hear that? Of course you don't. That's the silence of my womb. Because you RIPPED OFF MY SWEATER!

...I’m tired of everyone looking at me with pity in their eyes. I’m tired of feeling like my heart is being ripped out of my chest every damned day. I’m tired of waking up in the morning, and then remembering...

I fucked up. More than I have ever fucked up before. I had the love of my life in my hands for one beautiful, exquisite moment before I ripped her apart and my heart bore the paper cuts.

Love is taking chances when every rational part of you screams, ‘Don’t risk it.’ Because it’s only when your heart has been ripped open that you get a chance to find the one person capable of making it whole.

Cupid is anything but cute. As for handing our hearts, he’s more likely to rip them out. (Julian) But he can make people fall in love. (Selena) No. What he offers is an illusion. No power from above can make one human love another. Love comes from within the heart. (Julian)

Once, very long ago, Time fell in love with Fate. This, as you might imagine, proved problematic. Their romance disrupted the flow of time. It tangled the strings of fortune into knots.  The stars watched from the heavens nervously, worrying what might occur. What might happen to the days and nights were time to suffer a broken heart? What catastrophes might result if the same fate awaited Fate itself? The stars conspired and separated the two. For a while they breathed easier in the heavens. Time continued to flow as it always had, or perhaps imperceptibly slower. Fate weaved together the paths that were meant to intertwine, though perhaps a string was missed here and there. But eventually, Fate and Time found each other again.  In the heavens, the stars sighed, twinkling and fretting. They asked the Moon her advice. The Moon in turn called upon the parliament of owls to decide how best to proceed. The parliament of owls convened to discuss the matter amongst themselves night after night. They argued and debated while the world slept around them, and the world continued to turn, unaware that such important matters were under discussion while it slumbered.  The parliament of owls came to the logical conclusion that if the problem was in the combination, one of the elements should be removed. They chose to keep the one they felt more important. The parliament of owls told their decision to the stars and the stars agreed. The Moon did not, but on this night she was dark and could not offer her opinion.  So it was decided, and Fate was pulled apart. Ripped into pieces by beaks and claws. Fate’s screams echoed through the deepest corners and the highest heavens but no one dared to intervene save for a small brave mouse who snuck into the fray, creeping unnoticed through the blood and bone and feathers, and took Fate’s heart and kept it safe. When the furor died down there was nothing else left of Fate.  The owl who consumed Fate’s eyes gained great site, greater site then any that had been granted to a mortal creature before. The Parliament crowned him the Owl King. In the heavens the stars sparkled with relief but the moon was full of sorrow. And so time goes as it should and events that were once fated to happen are left instead to chance, and Chance never falls in love with anything for long. But the world is strange and endings are not truly endings no matter how the stars might wish it so.  Occasionally Fate can pull itself together again.  And Time is always waiting.

Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.

Every single time you claim to understand even a fraction of what I’m feeling, I want to disembowel you. I want to sever your carotid artery. I want to rip out your vertebrae, one by one. You have no idea what it is to love her,” he says angrily. “You couldn’t even begin to imagine. So stop trying to understand.

To the most inconsiderate asshole of a friend, I’m writing you this letter because I know that if I say what I have to say to your face I will probably punch you. I don’t know you anymore. I don’t see you anymore. All I get is a quick text or a rushed e-mail from you every few days. I know you are busy and I know you have Bethany, but hello? I’m supposed to be your best friend. You have no idea what this summer has been like. Ever since we were kids we pushed away every single person that could possibly have been our friend. We blocked people until there was only me and you. You probably haven’t noticed, because you have never been in the position I am in now. You have always had someone. You always had me. I always had you. Now you have Bethany and I have no one. Now I feel like those other people that used to try to become our friend, that tried to push their way into our circle but were met by turned backs. I know you’re probably not doing it deliberately just as we never did it deliberately. It’s not that we didn’t want anyone else, it’s just that we didn’t need them. Sadly now it looks like you don’t need me anymore. Anyway I’m not moaning on about how much I hate her, I’m just trying to tell you that I miss you. And that well . . . I’m lonely. Whenever you cancel nights out I end up staying home with Mum and Dad watching TV. It’s so depressing. This was supposed to be our summer of fun. What happened? Can’t you be friends with two people at once? I know you have found someone who is extra special, and I know you both have a special “bond,” or whatever, that you and I will never have. But we have another bond, we’re best friends. Or does the best friend bond disappear as soon as you meet somebody else? Maybe it does, maybe I just don’t understand that because I haven’t met that “somebody special.” I’m not in any hurry to, either. I liked things the way they were. So maybe Bethany is now your best friend and I have been relegated to just being your “friend.” At least be that to me, Alex. In a few years time if my name ever comes up you will probably say, “Rosie, now there’s a name I haven’t heard in years. We used to be best friends. I wonder what she’s doingnow; I haven’t seen or thought of her in years!” You will sound like my mum and dad when they have dinner parties with friends and talk about old times. They always mention people I’ve never even heard of when they’re talking about some of the most important days of their lives. Yet where are those people now? How could someone who was your bridesmaid 20 years ago not even be someone who you are on talking terms with now? Or in Dad’s case, how could he not know where his own best friend from college lives? He studied with the man for five years! Anyway, my point is (I know, I know, there is one), I don’t want to be one of those easily forgotten people, so important at the time, so special, so influential, and so treasured, yet years later just a vague face and a distant memory. I want us to be best friends forever, Alex. I’m happy you’re happy, really I am, but I feel like I’ve been left behind. Maybe our time has come and gone. Maybe your time is now meant to be spent with Bethany. And if that’s the case I won’t bother sending you this letter. And if I’m not sending this letter then what am I doing still writing it? OK I’m going now and I’m ripping these muddled thoughts up. Your friend, Rosie

Who am I? And how I wonder, will this story end? . . . My life? It is'nt easy to explain. It has not been the rip-roaring spectacular I fancied it woulf be, but neither have I burrowed around with the gophers. i suppose it has most resembled a bluechip stock: fairly stable, more ups and downs, and gradually tending over time. A good buy, a lucky buy, and I've learned that not everyone can say this about his life. But do not be misled. I am nothing special; of this I am sure. I am common man with common thought and I've led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me, and my name will soon be forgotten, but I've loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough. The romantics would call this a love story, the cynics would call it a tragedy. In my mind, it's a little bit of both, and no matter how you choose to view it in the end, it does not change the fact that involves a great deal of my life and the path I've chosen to follow. I have no complaints about the places it has taken me, enough complaints to fill a circus tent about other thins, maybe, but the path I've chosen has always been the right one, and I would'nt have had it any other way. Time, unfortunatley, does'nt make it easy to stay on course. The path is straight as ever, but now it is strewn with the rocks and gravel that accumulated over a lifetime . . . There is always a moment right before I begin to read the story when my mind churns, and I wonder, will it happen today? I don't know, for I never know beforehand, and deep down it really doesn't matter. It's the possibility that keeps me going, not the guarantee, a sort of wager on my part. And though you may call me a dreamer or a fool or any other thing, I believe that anything is possible. I realize that odds, and science, are againts me. But science is not the answer; this I know, this I have learned in my lifetime. And that leaves me with the belief that miracles, no matter how inexplicable or unbelievable, are real and can occur without regard to the natural order of things. So once again, just as I do ecery day, I begin to read the notebook aloud, so that she can hear it, in the hope that the miracle, that has come to dominate my life will once again prevail. And maybe, just maybe, it will.

Connections only caused a ripping pain no one deserved.

I KNOW THE WAY YOU CAN GET I know the way you can get When you have not had a drink of Love: Your face hardens, Your sweet muscles cramp. Children become concerned About a strange look that appears in your eyes Which even begins to worry your own mirror And nose. Squirrels and birds sense your sadness And call an important conference in a tall tree. They decide which secret code to chant To help your mind and soul. Even angels fear that brand of madness That arrays itself against the world And throws sharp stones and spears into The innocent And into one's self. O I know the way you can get If you have not been drinking Love: You might rip apart Every sentence your friends and teachers say, Looking for hidden clauses. You might weigh every word on a scale Like a dead fish. You might pull out a ruler to measure From every angle in your darkness The beautiful dimensions of a heart you once Trusted. I know the way you can get If you have not had a drink from Love's Hands. That is why all the Great Ones speak of The vital need To keep remembering God, So you will come to know and see Him As being so Playful And Wanting, Just Wanting to help. That is why Hafiz says: Bring your cup near me. For all I care about Is quenching your thirst for freedom! All a Sane man can ever care about Is giving Love!

It’s one way or another, Summer. For me, it’s black and white. You’re either in the friend zone or the lover zone. And with you…Gosh, Summer, you’re in my danger zone. My rip-my-heart-out and change-me-forever zone. I have to tread lightly with you. Because if I don’t, I may never be able to find my way back.

Merda! Her lace panties had snagged on his ring, the signet ring he'd inherited from his father, Giacomo Casanova. His father had seduced hundred of women without any problems whatsoever, and he was having trouble with just one. This was the real reason he never used the Casanova name. He could never live up to his father's reputation. The old man was probably laughing in his grave. Nine circles of hell," Jack muttered. Hell?" Lara asked. "I thought I was the Holy Land." You're paradise. Unfortunately, I am stuck there." Her eyes widened. "Stuck?" Normally, I would love being stuck to your lovely bum, but it would look odd if we go sightseeing with my hand under your skirt. Especially in the basilica." She glanced down. "How can you be stuck?" My ring. It's caught in the lace. See?" He moved his hand down her hip, dragging her undies down a few inches. Okay, stop." She bit her lip, frowning, then suddenly giggled. "I can't believe this has happened." I assure you, as much as I had hoped to get your clothes off, this was not part of my original plan." She snorted. "No problem. Just rip yourself loose." Are you sure?" It will destroy you undies." She narrowed her eyes with a seductuve look. "Rip it." Very well." He jerked his hand away, but the panties came with him. He yanked his hand back and forth, but the lacy, latex material simply stretched with him. "Santo cielo, they are indestructible." Lara laughed. He continued to wage battle, but to no avail. "They could use this material to build spaceships.

It happens the world over - we love ourselves more than we do the one we say we love. We all want to be Number One, we've got to be Number One or nothing! We can't see that we could make ourselves loved and needed in the Number Two, or Three, or Four spot. No sir, we've got to be Number One, and if we can't make it, we'll rip and tear at the loved one till we've ruined every smidgin of love that was ever there.

Then don't. I can't help you. They say that women dream of danger to those in their care and men of danger to themselves. But I don't dream at all. You say you can't? Then don't do it. That's all. Because I am done with my own whorish heart and I have been for a long time. You talk about taking a stand but there is no stand to take. My heart was ripped out of me the night he was born so don't ask for sorrow now. There is none. Maybe you'll be good at this. I doubt it, but who knows. The one thing I can tell you is that you won't survive for yourself. I know because I would have never have come this far. A person who had no one would be well advised to cobble together some passable ghost. Breathe it into being and coax it along with words of love. Offer it each phantom crumb and sheild it from harm with your body. As for me my only hope is for eternal nothingness and I hope it with all my heart.

Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly And wants to rip to shreds All your erroneous notions of truth That make you fight within yourself, dear one, And with others, Causing the world to weep On too many fine days.

No one, no one really knows loss until it’s someone you love. The deep-down kind of love that holds on to your bones and digs itself right in under your fingernails, as hard to budge as the years of compacted earth. And when it’s gone … it’s as if it’s been ripped from you. Raw and exposed, you stand dripping blood all over the good feckin’ carpet. Half-human, half-dead, one foot already in the grave.

Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love and dared to imagine a new way of living—one without massacres and torn throats and bonfires of the fallen, without revenants or bastard armies or children ripped from their mothers’ arms to take their turn in the killing and dying. This was not that world.

Can you possibly imagine how painful it is to suddenly have the one you love leave for no reason, how much it hurt your heart, how deeply it ripped you apart, how much you bled inside?

She stares in my eyes and loves me with a vehemence all her own. A scary, passionate type of love. One that rips away all pretenses and allows us to love each other bare and without consequence.

All I know is that right now I wanna rip your clothes off right here in the middle of this hall and throw you in one of these classrooms and kiss every square inch of your body, while a bunch of people who drive minivans listen wishing they were us.

You're good at this,' she murmured. 'Do you often travel with girls who've been flayed?' That earned her a soft laugh. 'No.' Then quietly, as he ran a cloth along her lower back, just below the dip in her waist. 'Would you be jealous if I did?' I'm not a jealous person was what Evangeline intended to say, but instead the words 'of course' came out. Jacks laughed, louder this time. Embarrassment surged through her. 'That's not what I meant to say.' 'It's all right. I'd probably kill another man if I found him with you like this.' Jacks' hands pressed harder as they went to her shoulders and, one by one, ripped off the sleeves of her dress so that what remained of the gown completely fell away. She made a sound somewhere between a squeal and a gasp. 'What that really necessary?' 'No, but everyone should have their clothes ripped off at some point.' She imagined Jacks was mostly trying to distract her from all the pain, yet she blushed all the way from her cheeks to her chest. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw him smile. And for a second, nothing hurt.

Maybe instead, I wanted the kind of love that devastates you. The kind that rips your insides open and leaves you gutted, out in the cold. Maybe I wanted that great, epic, once-in-a-lifetime love, that consumes with the brightest of flames. And maybe, even though I knew the hottest fires often burn out the fastest, even though it couldn’t last… it was worth it. People say love isn’t supposed to be painful. But maybe the best things in life are the ones that hurt the most after they’re gone.

I remember that one day, when we were in a car tooling along at top speed,we crashed into a cyclist, an apparently very young and very pretty girl. Her head was almost totally ripped off by the wheels. For a long time, we were parked a few yards beyond without getting out, fully absorbed in the sight of the corpse. The horror and despair at so much bloody flesh, nauseating in part, and in part very beautiful, was fairly equivalent to our usual impression upon seeing one another.

He was watching me, and he chuckled. "Do you know how a man tames a wolf?" he asked me. "No," I said. "You get some clothing that you've been wearing for a while, and you toss it in with her. In the cage or the cavern where she sleeps. That first one, she rips up, shreds it to nothing. The second one, she just mouths it a bit, gets a taste. Inhales, like you're doing there. The third but of clothing, she starts dragging it around, loving on it, sleeping with it. And then you've got her under your spell. She's got the scent of you, wants to keep it around. She'll follow you everywhere." "Are you calling me a wolf?" I asked. "Are you calling me a man?" he said.

Anger engulfed me and I ripped my hand away from him. ‘You left me,’ I growled. ‘You treated me no better than one of your random hookups, and suddenly because you’ve decided that no, wait, you do love me, I'm to come running back?’ I stood up, my chair clattering behind me with the force of the movement. ‘Your words are nice in the moment. But at the end of the day it means fuck all. I don’t trust you with your own feelings, Nate. Why the hell would I trust you with mine?

So if I asked you about art, you'd probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. Life's work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientations, the whole works, right? But I'll bet you can't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You've never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling; seen that. If I ask you about women, you'd probably give me a syllabus about your personal favorites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can't tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy. You're a tough kid. And I'd ask you about war, you'd probably throw Shakespeare at me, right, "once more unto the breach dear friends." But you've never been near one. You've never held your best friend's head in your lap, watch him gasp his last breath looking to you for help. I'd ask you about love, you'd probably quote me a sonnet. But you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you. Who could rescue you from the depths of hell. And you wouldn't know what it's like to be her angel, to have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through cancer. And you wouldn't know about sleeping sitting up in the hospital room for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes, that the terms "visiting hours" don't apply to you. You don't know about real loss, 'cause it only occurs when you've loved something more than you love yourself. And I doubt you've ever dared to love anybody that much. And look at you... I don't see an intelligent, confident man... I see a cocky, scared shitless kid. But you're a genius Will. No one denies that. No one could possibly understand the depths of you. But you presume to know everything about me because you saw a painting of mine, and you ripped my fucking life apart. You're an orphan right? [Will nods] Sean: You think I know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are, because I read Oliver Twist? Does that encapsulate you? Personally... I don't give a shit about all that, because you know what, I can't learn anything from you, I can't read in some fuckin' book. Unless you want to talk about you, who you are. Then I'm fascinated. I'm in. But you don't want to do that do you sport? You're terrified of what you might say. Your move, chief.

i loved you . I cared for you when no one else did and you turned around ripped it up and throw it back at my fucking face like it meant nothing to you .

Does anything about the way I love you feel tragic?” I ask, brushing my lips across her jaw. “Yes,” she whimpers. “But only because one day it will end.” A growl rips from my throat, and I fist her hair, tipping her head back and forcing her to see the truth. “You and I will never end, little mouse. Even when we’re six feet under, and our bones are dust, I will haunt your soul until it aches to be free of me. And then, I will hold you tighter.

My desire, my sincere and heartfelt desire is to rip that surprisingly sheer garment from your body, toss you onto that bed, and indeed ravish you from head to toe. I wish to make love to you until you are too exhausted to do so much as stand without support. Until you call out my name in your dreams and reach for me in your sleep. Until you can think of no one and nothing beyond the touch of my hand, the caress of my lips.

I search my brain for the truth. “I want it more than anything, just as long as you promise me one thing.” “And what’s that?” “That if at any time it gets to be too much for you, you’ll leave me—walk away and get out.” “That will never happen,” he guarantees me. “You need to give me some credit. You left me, ripped out my heart, and then came back acting like a robot, and you know what? We made it through. You and I, good or bad, belong together. We make each other whole.

I drop on my back on the bed, panting and sweating. How will I survive this missing? How do others do it? People die all the time. Every day. Every hour. There are families all over the world staring at beds that are no longer slept in, shoes that are no longer worn. Families that no longer have to buy a particular cereal, a kind of shampoo. There are people everywhere standing in line at the movies, buying curtains, walking dogs, while inside, their hearts are ripping to shreds. For years. For their whole lives. I don't believe time heals. I don't want it to. If I heal, doesn't that mean I've accepted the world without her?

We need to talk about the hierarchy of grief. You hear it all the time—no grief is worse than any other. I don’t think that’s one bit true. There is a hierarchy of grief. Divorce is not the same as the death of a partner. Death of a grandparent is not the same as the death of a child. Losing your job is not the same as losing a limb. Here’s the thing: every loss is valid. And every loss is not the same. You can’t flatten the landscape of grief and say that everything is equal. It isn’t. It’s easier to see when we take it out of the intensely personal: stubbing your toe hurts. It totally hurts. For a moment, the pain can be all-consuming. You might even hobble for a while. Having your foot ripped off by a passing freight train hurts, too. Differently. The pain lasts longer. The injury needs recovery time, which may be uncertain or complicated. It affects and impacts your life moving forward. You can’t go back to the life you had before you became a one-footed person. No one would say these two injuries are exactly the same.

I know I need to face the facts, and remain strong to extricate myself from this hideous situation, but not yet. I figure I’m owed at least one day to indulge my self-pity. One day to wallow in despair. To give into the soul-crunching heart-stomping pain ripping me to shreds on the inside.

A real man, the kind of man a woman wants to give her life to, is one who will respect her dignity, who will honor her like the valuable treasures she is. A real man will not attempt to rip her precious pearl from its protective shell, or persuade her with charm to give away her treasure prematurely, but he will wait patiently until she willingly gives him the prize of her heart. A real man will cherish and care for that precious prize forever.

Compassion isn't just about feeling the pain of others; it's about bringing them in toward yourself. If we love what God loves, then, in compassion, margins get erased. 'Be compassionate as God is compassionate,' means the dismantling of barriers that exclude. In Scripture, Jesus is in a house so packed that no one can come through the door anymore. So the people open the roof and lower this paralytic down through it, so Jesus can heal him. The focus of the story is, understandably, the healing of the paralytic. But there is something more significant than that happening here. They're ripping the roof off the place, and those outside are being let in.

She loved him in a way that was necessary, not luxurious. She loved him like the tide loves the sand—trapped together, one lost without the other, pushed and pulled, but never ripped apart. She loved him in a deep and singular way, almost as though God had crafted one heart in heaven, then split it between Holden’s body and hers, fating her to a never-ending longing to be with him, or a fractional life without him.

Oh and if you ever shove my sister like that again I’ll rip one of your arms off.” He said it so calmly, but the darkness in his eyes said he’d absolutely do it. Aw, I love my psycho big brother.

Trust me, after thirty-one and a half years of knowing what love doesn’t feel like, I think I’m a goddamn expert at recognizing when the real thing comes along to rip right into my heart. She swallowed, making the skin at her throat flutter. “I’ve ripped right into your heart?” “Uh-huh. Brutally. Savagely.” “But I didn’t mean to,” she said, sadly. “I know, baby. That was just fate doing its thing.

Wanna know what a bullet feels like, Warren? A real one? It’s not like in the comics…I think you need to. Feel it…It’s not going to make a neat little hole. First - it’ll obliterate your internal organs. Your lung will collapse, feels like drowning…When it finally hits your spine, it’ll blow your central nervous system-…I’m talking. The pain will be unbearable, but you won’t be able to move… A bullet usually travels faster than this, of course. But the dying? It seems like it takes forever. Something, isn’t it? One tiny piece of metal destroys everything. It ripped her insides out… It took her light away. From me. From the world… And now the one person who should be here is gone - and a waste like you gets to live. A tiny piece of metal. Can you feel it now?

I’ve felt loss. I’ve suffered and lived through what felt like my heart being ripped from my chest. Death was a brutal thing. Its behavior could be unrestrainedly ferocious, and at times, radiated toward the people who didn’t deserve to be at the receiving end of its wrath. It tore your heart into two by taking your loved one and replacing them with nothing but the sweet whispers of their memories. Those memories will become the shoulders you cry on.” – Amo Jones

there is a list of questions i want to ask but never will there is a list of questions i go through in my head every time i'm alone and my mind can't stop itself from searching for you there is a list of questions i want to ask so if you're listening somewhere here i am asking them what do you think happens to the love that's left behind when two lovers leave how blue do you think it gets before it passes away does it pass away or does it still exist somewhere waiting for us to come back when we lied to ourselves by calling this unconditional and left which one of us hurt more i shattered into a million little pieces and those pieces shattered into a million more crumbled into dust till there was nothing left of me but the silence tell me how love how did the grieving feel for you how did the mourning hurt how did you peel your eyes open after every blink knowing i'd never be there staring back it must be hard to live with what ifs there must always be this constant dull aching in the pit of your stomach trust me i feel it too how in the world did we get here how did we live through it and how are we still living how many months did it take before you stopped thinking of me or are you still thinking of me cause if you are then maybe i am too thinking of you thinking of me with me in me around me everywhere you and me and us do you still touch yourself to the thoughts of me do you still imagine my naked naked tiny tiny body pressed into yours do you still imagine the curve of my spine and how you wanted to rip it out of me cause the way it dipped into my perfectly rounded bottom drove you crazy baby sugar baby sweet baby ever since we left how many times did you pretend it was my hand stroking you how many times did you search for me in your fantasies and end up crying instead of coming don't you lie to me i can tell when you're lying cause there's always that little bit of arrogance in your response are you angry with me are you okay and would you tell me if you're not and if we ever see each other again do you think you'd reach out and hold me like you said you would the last time we spoke and you talked of the next time we would or do you think we'd just look shake in our skin as we pine to absorb as much as we can of each other cause by this time we've probably got someone else waiting at home we were good together weren't we and is it wrong that i'm asking you these questions tell me love that you have been looking for these answers too

And I have to admit to myself that although I have plenty of sound reasons for not being a father—I know I would also be inconsistent and moody, alternately smothering and neglectful, plus I will never, ever be able to afford riding lessons or braces, let alone college—one of the reasons I don’t want children is fear. I’m afraid that if I ever did have children of my own I would love them so painfully it would rip my soul in half, that I would never again have a waking moment free from the terror that something bad might ever happen to them.

Father, R.I.P., Sums Me Up at Twenty-Three She has no head for politics, craves good jewelry, trusts too readily, marries too early. Then one by one she sends away her friends and stands apart, smug sapphire, her answer to everything a slender zero, a silent shrug--and every day still hears me say she'll never be pretty. Instead she reads novels, instead her belt matches her shoes. She is master of the condolence letter, and knows how to please a man with her mouth: Good. Nose too large, eyes too closely set, hair not glorious blonde, not her mother's red, nor the glossy black her younger sister has, the little raven I loved best.

Awe. It’s a feeling he misses. He made lists of things he wanted to feel when he was younger, big things, small things, ice, snow, the sand at the beach, someone else’s hands holding his, feeling him feeling them, a feedback loop of feelings, which is what happens when two people make love. He wanted to feel things that made him feel safe and scared and things that ripped his heart out of his chest, things that made him want to go home and things that made him want to travel, things that made him proud and things that made him regret his choices and he, like all people, slowly ticked these things off the list in his head as he lived, as the world turned until soon, there were very few things left to feel. He believed the last thing he would feel, would be nothing, as that was nearly impossible to feel unless you were dead or hadn’t been born yet. He wondered what it’d be like to not be able to wonder. He’d once wanted to know what it felt like to be able to talk to people properly, to be normal but he’d given up on finding that feeling, figuring no one ever really found it.

Amy, amante, amour, he whispered, as if the words themselves were smuts of ash rising and falling, as though the candle were the story of his life and she the flame. He lay down in his haphazard cot. After a time he found and opened a book he had been reading that he had expected to end well, a romance which he wanted to end well, with the hero and heroine finding love, with peace and joy and redemption and understanding. Love is two bodies with one soul, he read, and turned the page. But there was nothing—the final pages had been ripped away and used as toilet paper or smoked, and there was no hope or joy or understanding. There was no last page. The book of his life just broke off. There was only the mud below him and the filthy sky above. There was to be no peace and no hope. And Dorrigo Evans understood that the love story would go on forever and ever, world without end. He would live in hell, because love is that also.

Don’t get me wrong, I hate that bitch, but I also love her in that ‘I'm going to rip your heart out and hang it on my wall so no one else can have it kind of way’.

Forgive me, madam," he said lightly, amused, "but waiting to make love to you again is straining my nerves." She scoffed but she was quite shaken; he could see it in her expression, in the way she nervously toyed with the buttons on her pelisse. "How awfully presumptuous of you to think I'd let you." "You will," he insisted soothingly. She gaped at him. "Please continue," he urged. "I'm aching to hear the rest." "You're as arrogant as usual." "You missed it, though." "I absolutely did not," she asserted. He grinned. "You missed my arrogance almost as much as I missed your impudence, little one." "That's absurd." "I love you, Caroline," he softly, quickly replied, catching her off guard with such tenderness. "Move on before I decide I'm finished with this conversation, rip off your clothes, and show you how much.

It was clear from the way James and Cordelia looked at each other that this was a love match. It was also clear why Matthew was standing where he was-- from this vantage point, there was a perfect view of James and Cordelia, his dark head bent over her fiery one, their faces close together. Magnus cleared his throat. "I see why my waistcoats cannot hold your attention, Fairchild. I've been where you are. Wanting what you can't have will only rip your heart apart.

Sean: …………And I'd ask you about war, you'd probably throw Shakespeare at me, right, "once more unto the breach dear friends." But you've never been near one. You've never held your best friend's head in your lap, watch him gasp his last breath looking to you for help. I'd ask you about love, you'd probably quote me a sonnet. But you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you. Who could rescue you from the depths of hell. And you wouldn't know what it's like to be her angel, to have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through cancer. And you wouldn't know about sleeping sitting up in the hospital room for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes, that the terms "visiting hours" don't apply to you. You don't know about real loss, 'cause it only occurs when you've loved something more than you love yourself. And I doubt you've ever dared to love anybody that much. And look at you... I don't see an intelligent, confident man... I see a scared shitless kid. But you're a genius Will. No one denies that. No one could possibly understand the depths of you. But you presume to know everything about me because you saw a painting of mine, and you ripped my life apart. You're an orphan right? [Will nods] Sean: You think I know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are, because I read Oliver Twist? Does that encapsulate you? Personally... I don't give a shit about all that, because you know what, I can't learn anything from you, I can't read in some book. Unless you want to talk about you, who you are. Then I'm fascinated. I'm in. But you don't want to do that do you sport? You're terrified of what you might say. Your move, chief.

My mom always said, there are two kinds of love in this world: the steady breeze, and the hurricane. The steady breeze is slow and patient. It fills the sails of the boats in the harbor, and lifts laundry on the line. It cools you on a hot summer’s day; brings the leaves of fall, like clockwork every year. You can count on a breeze, steady and sure and true. But there’s nothing steady about a hurricane. It rips through town, reckless, sending the ocean foaming up the shore, felling trees and power lines and anyone dumb or fucked-up enough to stand in its path. Sure, it’s a thrill like nothing you’ve ever known: your pulse kicks, your body calls to it, like a spirit possessed. It’s wild and breathless and all-consuming. But what comes next? “You see a hurricane coming, you run.” My mom told me, the summer I turned eighteen. “You shut the doors, and you bar the windows. Because come morning, there’ll be nothing but the wreckage left behind.” Emerson Ray was my hurricane. Looking back, I wonder if mom saw it in my eyes: the storm clouds gathering, the dry crackle of electricity in the air. But it was already too late. No warning sirens were going to save me. I guess you never really know the danger, not until you’re the one left, huddled on the ground, surrounded by the pieces of your broken heart. It’s been four years now since that summer. Since Emerson. It took everything I had to pull myself back together, to crawl out of the empty wreckage of my life and build something new in its place. This time, I made it storm-proof. Strong. I barred shutters over my heart, and found myself a steady breeze to love. I swore, nothing would ever destroy me like that summer again. I was wrong. That’s the thing about hurricanes. Once the storm touches down, all you can do is pray.

You could drink, slice, do meth, snort coke, burn, cut, stab, slash, rip out your eyelashes, or fuck till you bleed and it’s all the same thing: self-harm. She says: whether someone has hurt you or made you feel bad or unworthy or unclean, rather than taking the rational step of realizing that person is an asshole or a psycho and should be shot or strung up and you should stay the fuck away from them, instead we internalize our abuse and begin to blame and punish ourselves and weirdly, once you start cutting or burning or fucking because you feel so shitty and unworthy, your body starts to release this neat-feeling shit called endorphins and you feel so fucking high the world is like cotton candy at the best and most colorful state fair in the world, only bloody and stuffed with infection. But the fucked-up part is once you start self-harming, you can never not be a creepy freak, because your whole body is now a scarred and charred battlefield and nobody likes that on a girl, nobody will love that, and so all of us, every one, is screwed, inside and out. Wash, rinse, fucking repeat.

And the strange thing was he had never loved her more than in that moment, because at that moment she had become himself. But thats not love, he thought, thats not what she wants, not what any of them want, they do not want you to find yourself in them, they want instead that you should lose yourself in them. And yet, he thought, they are always trying to find themselves in you. [...] And it seemed to him then that every human was always looking for himself, in bars, in railway trains, in offices, in mirrors, in love, especially in love, for the self of him that is there, someplace, in every other human. Love was not to give oneself, but find oneself, describe oneself. And that the whole conception had been written wrong. Because the only part of any man that he can ever touch or understand is that part of himself he recognises in him. And that he is always looking for the way in which he can expose his sealed bee cell and reach the other airtight cells with which he is connected in the waxy comb. And the only way he had ever found, the only code, the only language by which he could speak and be heard by other men, could communicate himself, was with a bugle. If you had a bugle here, he told himself, you could speak to her and be understood, you could play Fatigue Call for her, with its tiredness, its heavy belly going out to sweep somebody else's streets when it would rather stay home and sleep, she would understand it then. But you havent got a bugle, himself said, not here nor any other place. Your tongue has been ripped out. All you got is two bottles, one nearly full, one nearly empty.

Our love is rare. It’s one I can’t abandon, even if I tried. When she screams, an identical one rips through me. When she cries, my world rains with grief. When she loves, I truly, truly fly. I have never wanted anyone else but Lily.

I ripped the pages out of the book. I reversed the order, so the last one was first, and the first was last. When I flipped through them, it looked like the man was floating up through the sky. And if I'd had more pictures, he would've flown through a window, back into the building, and the smoke would've poured into the hole that the plane was about to come out of. Dad would've left his messages backward, until the machine was empty, and the plane would've flown backward away from him, all the way to Boston. He would've taken the elevator to the street and pressed the button for the top floor. He would've walked backward to the subway, and the subway would've gone backward through the tunnel, back to our stop. Dad would've gone backward through the turnstile, then swiped his Metrocard backward, then walked home backward as he read the New York Times from right to left. He would've spit coffee into his mug, unbrushed his teeth, and put hair on his face with a razor. He would've gotten back into bed, the alarm would've rung backward, he would've dreamt backward. Then he would've gotten up again at the end of the night before the worst day. He would've walked backward to my room, whistling 'I Am the Walrus' backward. He would've gotten into bed with me. We would've looked at the stars on my ceiling, which would've pulled back their light from our eyes. I'd have said 'Nothing' backward. He'd have said 'Yeah, buddy?' backward. I'd have said 'Dad?' backward, which would have sounded the same as 'Dad' forward. He would have told me the story of the Sixth Borough, from the voice in the can at the end to the beginning, from 'I love you' to 'Once upon a time.' We would have been safe.

I have been pushed by the world into a state of psychic feudalism. and you want me to make myself vulnerable to you. How much vulnerability do you think one person can take? Do you want me to rip my skin off and stand in the wind, bleeding and raw?

I had done everything—everything for that love. I had ripped myself to shreds, I had killed innocents and debased myself, and he had sat beside Amarantha on that throne. And he couldn’t do anything, hadn’t risked it—hadn’t risked being caught until there was one night left, and all he’d wanted to do wasn’t free me, but fuck me, and—

In the age of social media, you weren’t angry or grieving unless you posted about it online. Our instincts dictated we run to strangers on the internet the moment we experience pain, to tell the world how deeply gutted we are over the loss of our loved ones—as if the multitude of absentminded apologies and offers of prayers would actually mend the rip.

The silent times were the hardest. That was when I had to mourn. I would close one eye and look at my phone, imagine it cracking in half, the way people sitting shiva ripped a piece of clothing. I didn't want to mourn. I didn't want to accept my loss -- not only the loss of communication, but the loss of an idea that my mother was going to be the one to change. It made me feel like a loser. It meant I had wanted something and hadn't gotten it, that I'd been, in some way, rejected. It meant my needs were too big for this world.

It's a physical sickness. Etienne. How much I love him. I love Etienne. I love it when he cocks an eyebrow whenever I say something he finds clever or amusing. I love listening to his boots clomp across my bedroom ceiling. I love that the accent over his first name is called an acute accent, and that he has a cute accent. I love that. I love sitting beside him in physics. Brushing against him during lands. His messy handwriting on our worksheets. I love handing him his backpack when class is over,because then my fingers smell like him for the next ten minutes. And when Amanda says something lame, and he seeks me out to exchange an eye roll-I love that,too. I love his boyish laugh and his wrinkled shirts and his ridiculous knitted hat. I love his large brown eyes,and the way he bites his nails,and I love his hair so much I could die. There's only one thing I don't love about him. Her. If I didn't like Ellie before,it's nothing compared to how I feel now. It doesn't matter that I can count how many times we've met on one hand. It's that first image, that's what I can't shake. Under the streeplamp. Her fingers in his hair. Anytime I'm alone, my mind wanders back to that night. I take it further. She touches his chest. I take it further.His bedroom.He slips off her dress,their lips lock, their bodies press,and-oh my God-my temperature rises,and my stomach is sick. I fantasize about their breakup. How he could hurt her,and she could hurt him,and of all the ways I could hurt her back. I want to grab her Parisian-styled hair and yank it so hard it rips from her skull. I want to sink my claws into her eyeballs and scrape. It turns out I am not a nice person. Etienne and I rarely discussed her before, but she's completely taboo now. Which tortures me, because since we've gotten back from winter break, they seem to be having problems again. Like an obsessed stalker,I tally the evenings he spend with me versus the evening he spends with her. I'm winning.

She felt a wave of fury overtake her as she looked at him standing there naked. She loved him with everything she had, but the love ripped her heart right out.

He definitely wasn’t a Pegasus. He didn’t impress me. Plus, I had been there when his mom ripped him a new one once years ago for talking back to her, so there was that, too.

Such a terrible emotion, love; perhaps the only emotion capable of soothing a heart one moment, only the rip it in half the next.

Because love is bloody awful, Chicken. And fantastic. A beautiful, horrible, messy thing. It will make you feel like you can fly one day and rip your guts out the next. It's complicated.

I didn’t know anything about growing apart. I only knew being ripped apart. But I imagined it felt like a tree root slowly growing so big and strong that it breaks through the sidewalk. “I’m

Your friends are…interesting,” she said, making me snort. “I would hate to see your enemies.” She looked back at me, black eyes assessing. “You did not mention that one of the ‘friends’ you risked your life for was desperately hoping he could rip your head off.” “I was a soldier of the Order,” I said wearily. “He’s the leader of a rogue dragon underground. I’m sure I’ve killed a few of his dragons in the past.”I’m also stupidly in love with the girl he considers his, and we both know it.

Yeah, I do. And right now, all signs point to me taking you down to my room and fucking your brains out.” Dead. RIP Jake Compton, the best grinder the NHL ever had. He died doing what he loved most.

I watched him as he lined up the ships in bottles on his deck, bringing them over from the shelves where they usually sat. He used an old shirt of my mother's that had been ripped into rags and began dusting the shelves. Under his desk there were empty bottles- rows and rows of them we had collected for our future shipbuilding. In the closet were more ships- the ships he had built with his own father, ships he had built alone, and then those we had made together. Some were perfect, but their sails browned; some had sagged or toppled over the years. Then there was the one that had burst into flames in the week before my death. He smashed that one first. My heart seized up. He turned and saw all the others, all the years they marked and the hands that had held them. His dead father's, his dead child's. I watched his as he smashed the rest. He christened the walls and wooden chair with the news of my death, and afterward he stood in the guest room/den surrounded by green glass. The bottle, all of them, lay broken on the floor, the sails and boat bodies strewn among them. He stood in the wreckage. It was then that, without knowing how, I revealed myself. In every piece of glass, in every shard and sliver, I cast my face. My father glanced down and around him, his eyes roving across the room. Wild. It was just for a second, and then I was gone. He was quiet for a moment, and then he laughed- a howl coming up from the bottom of his stomach. He laughed so loud and deep, I shook with it in my heaven. He left the room and went down two doors to my beadroom. The hallway was tiny, my door like all the others, hollow enough to easily punch a fist through. He was about to smash the mirror over my dresser, rip the wallpaper down with his nails, but instead he fell against my bed, sobbing, and balled the lavender sheets up in his hands. 'Daddy?' Buckley said. My brother held the doorknob with his hand. My father turned but was unable to stop his tears. He slid to the floor with his fists, and then he opened up his arms. He had to ask my brother twice, which he had never to do do before, but Buckley came to him. My father wrapped my brother inside the sheets that smelled of me. He remembered the day I'd begged him to paint and paper my room purple. Remembered moving in the old National Geographics to the bottom shelves of my bookcases. (I had wanted to steep myself in wildlife photography.) Remembered when there was just one child in the house for the briefest of time until Lindsey arrived. 'You are so special to me, little man,' my father said, clinging to him. Buckley drew back and stared at my father's creased face, the fine bright spots of tears at the corners of his eyes. He nodded seriously and kissed my father's cheek. Something so divine that no one up in heaven could have made it up; the care a child took with an adult. 'Hold still,' my father would say, while I held the ship in the bottle and he burned away the strings he'd raised the mast with and set the clipper ship free on its blue putty sea. And I would wait for him, recognizing the tension of that moment when the world in the bottle depended, solely, on me.

To the delicate, You will fall for the rough ones. the cold ones. the ones filled with apathy. you will spend your time counting their affection in change. you will stuff your pockets with silence. you will settle for second hand love. Delicate, you will be fashioned in the art of forgiveness. you will love like it’s a religion. you will memorize birthdays, phone numbers, and the moments you’ve heard goodbye. and when life becomes unyielding, and the burden too heavy, you will fault yourself. blame the material you are made of. say that you rip too easy, expect too much, give too often. you are a well that keeps on leaking. but even if you overflow, even if the thunder finds your home, you must remain soft. and if they have broken your heart, allow it to make you softer. kinder. do not imitate the cruel. do not allow yourself to take the shape of those who hurt you.

You grew up and fell in love with Jace. He both filled your heart and ripped it away from you in one night. You’ve never gotten past that. Yeah, you moved on. Ty filled the rest of your heart in such a way that you didn’t need Jace. But even so, I don’t think you ever truly got over him. He’s always been a part of you, even when he wasn’t around.

What if she doesn't worry about her body and eats enough for all the growing she has to do? She might rip her stockings and slam-dance on a forged ID to the Pogues, and walk home barefoot, holding her shoes, alone at dawn; she might baby-sit in a battered-women's shelter one night a month; she might skateboard down Lombard Street with its seven hairpin turns, or fall in love with her best friend and do something about it, or lose herself for hours gazing into test tubes with her hair a mess, or climb a promontory with the girls and get drunk at the top, or sit down when the Pledge of Allegiance says stand, or hop a freight train, or take lovers without telling her last name, or run away to sea. She might revel in all the freedoms that seem so trivial to those who could take them for granted; she might dream seriously the dreams that seem to obvious to those who grew up with them really available. Who knows what she would do? Who knows what it would feel like?

Just that winter she had found herself saying to a young woman who worked with her at the tasting bar on Saturdays that between a man and a woman there was always one person who was stronger than the other one. 'That doesn't mean the weaker one doesn't love the stronger,' she'd pleaded. The girl looked at her blankly. But for my mother what mattered was that as she spoke, she had suddenly identified herself as the weaker one. This revelation sent her reeling. What had she thought all those years but the opposite? She pulled her chair as close to his head as she could and laid her face on the edge of his pillow to watch him breathing, to see the flutter of the eye beneath his eyelid when he dreamed. How could it be that you could love someone so far from home? She had put billboards and roads in between them, throwing roadblocks behind her and ripping off the rearview mirror, and thought that that would make him disappear? erase their life and children? It was so simple, as she watched him, as his regular breathing calmed her, that she did not even see it happening at first. She began to think of the rooms in our house and the hours that she had worked so hard to forget spent inside of them. Like fruit put up in jars and forgotten about, the sweetness seemed even more distilled as she returned. There on that shelf were all the dates and silliness of thier early love, the braid that began to form of their dreams, the solid root of a burgeoning family. The first solid evidence of it all. Me.

In that seminar I attended at eighteen, the speaker asked, “What percentage of shared responsibility do you have in making a relationship work?” I was a teenager, so wise in the ways of true love. Of course I had all the answers. “Fifty/fifty!” I blurted out. It was so obvious; both people must be willing to share the responsibility evenly or someone’s getting ripped off. “Fifty-one/forty-nine,” yelled someone else, arguing that you’d have to be willing to do more than the other person. Aren’t relationships built on self-sacrifice and generosity? “Eighty/twenty,” yelled another. The instructor turned to the easel and wrote 100/0 on the paper in big black letters. “You have to be willing to give 100 percent with zero expectation of receiving anything in return,” he said. “Only when you’re willing to take 100 percent responsibility for making the relationship work will it work. Otherwise, a relationship left to chance will always be vulnerable to disaster.” Whoa. This wasn’t what I was expecting! But I quickly understood how this concept could transform every area of my life. If I always took 100 percent responsibility for everything I experienced—completely owning all of my choices and all the ways I responded to whatever happened to me—I held the power. Everything was up to me. I was responsible for everything I did, didn’t do, or how I responded to what was done to me.

No one, no one really knows loss until it’s someone you love. The deep-down kind of love that holds on to your bones and digs itself right in under your fingernails, as hard to budge as the years of compacted earth. And when it’s gone … it’s as if it’s been ripped from you. Raw and exposed, you stand dripping blood all over the good feckin’ carpet. Half-human, half-dead, one foot already in the grave.

A KING WHO PLACED MIRRORS IN HIS PALACE There lived a king; his comeliness was such The world could not acclaim his charm too much. The world's wealth seemed a portion of his grace; It was a miracle to view his face. If he had rivals,then I know of none; The earth resounded with this paragon. When riding through his streets he did not fail To hide his features with a scarlet veil. Whoever scanned the veil would lose his head; Whoever spoke his name was left for dead, The tongue ripped from his mouth; whoever thrilled With passion for this king was quickly killed. A thousand for his love expired each day, And those who saw his face, in blank dismay Would rave and grieve and mourn their lives away- To die for love of that bewitching sight Was worth a hundred lives without his light. None could survive his absence patiently, None could endure this king's proximity- How strange it was that man could neither brook The presence nor the absence of his look! Since few could bear his sight, they were content To hear the king in sober argument, But while they listened they endure such pain As made them long to see their king again. The king commanded mirrors to be placed About the palace walls, and when he faced Their polished surfaces his image shone With mitigated splendour to the throne. If you would glimpse the beauty we revere Look in your heart-its image will appear. Make of your heart a looking-glass and see Reflected there the Friend's nobility; Your sovereign's glory will illuminate The palace where he reigns in proper state. Search for this king within your heart; His soul Reveals itself in atoms of the Whole. The multitude of forms that masquerade Throughout the world spring from the Simorgh's shade. If you catch sight of His magnificence It is His shadow that beguiles your glance; The Simorgh's shadow and Himself are one; Seek them together, twinned in unison. But you are lost in vague uncertainty... Pass beyond shadows to Reality. How can you reach the Simorgh's splendid court? First find its gateway, and the sun, long-sought, Erupts through clouds; when victory is won, Your sight knows nothing but the blinding sun.

Malinda moved so we were eye-level. "Forget the people who've hurt you. You don't have them anymore, but you have two others that'll do anything to you. Mason and Logan would move mountains for you. I see how you are with them. You love them, but you're scared to let yourself be happy. Why? Because that's when they'll leave? Is that what you think? You've got it all wrong. Those two will never leave you." She tapped my chest. Once. Twice. "You. You're the one that's going to hurt them. You have that power, and you don't know it. You could rip those two apart in a second, and they're the ones who are scared of you. Not the other way around. You need to recognize the real situation.

Morfyd’s care. As she walked out of the cave she passed Annwyl walking in. The girl had her swords in one hand. The other hand held her ripped shirt and bindings over her ample breasts. Her brows angled down into a dark frown and she wouldn’t even look at Morfyd as she passed. “How did that talk go then?” Morfyd called over her shoulder. “Shut. Up.” Morfyd laughed as she advanced into the glen toward the clearing where she could take off. She rounded a corner and came upon her brother, his chainmail shirt and sword in his big hand, heading toward the hidden entrance of his cave. She watched him as he passed and she noticed the long scratches across his back. “How did that talk go then?” Morfyd called over her shoulder. “Shut. Up.” Morfyd shook her head. If love always made you this pathetic, she wanted nothing to do with it.

She’d taken the time and care to have her tape recorder ready so that any time she had to fart, she could just pick it up and rip one. When she had a full cassette tape, she drew up a cover and mailed it to the office. I’d play it for people and they’d say, “That’s from your Mother???” She

Striding, finally, into the solitude. You feel as if part of your body has been ripped from you, as if flesh has been torn from flesh. But you feel powerful too, for you're free, after so long; the great burden of uncertainty, and guilt, has gone. But then the anger comes. At all the times in the past you've said I love you and felt stripped. All the times they never rang back. All the love affairs that evaporated, bleakly, into one-night stands. All the times they've drowned you out. Drained your energy. Your confidence. Stood you up. Walked out. Wanted a Chinese girl next.

Whats the Use of a Title?" They don’t make it the beautiful die in flame— suicide pills, rat poison, rope what— ever... they rip their arms off, throw themselves out of windows, they pull their eyes out of the sockets, reject love reject hate reject, reject. they don’t make it the beautiful can’t endure, they are butterflies they are doves they are sparrows, they don’t make it. one tall shot of flame while the old men play checkers in the park one flame, one good flame while the old men play checkers in the park in the sun. the beautiful are found in the edge of a room crumpled into spiders and needles and silence and we can never understand why they left, they were so beautiful. they don’t make it, the beautiful die young and leave the ugly to their ugly lives. lovely and brilliant: life and suicide and death as the old men play checkers in the sun in the park.

When it was real it wasn’t funny. When you touched someone, they were always with you. When his mouth was on mine, we held the same breath in the same moment, and when he was naked, his body was covered in tiny black hairs that stuck to my clothes even after I washed them. He had sowly become a part of me and when he was cruel, or cold, or acted like we couldn’t go on like this anymore it felt like he was ripping my limbs off, one at a time.

Love, comes to steal you like a thief in the night. It aims to take your most precious from you. It gags, you, binds you, cripples you to keep you from running away, rips off your skin making you raw, and holds you ransomed asking for so much wealth one is forced into imprisonment…isn’t is beautiful?

That was when Estefania, who had made her pain the world’s pain, stood up, her knees dirty, shaking, her tights torn. She took a distanced look around and then she started tearing her tights even more. She kicked her expensive shoes through the wind, then she ripped off her dress, screaming as if it were burning, her second skin, her role as an actress, her one-woman show, as if she herself were on fire, as if her clothes were drenched in acid and abandoned love.

He began to cry then, clutching LB. The tears came easily. He had not cried tears of such distilled regret since his son had gone missing. LB was going limp, either spent, tired of fighting, or resigned to her fate. Luke hugged her so, so tight. He wanted LB to remember his touch. The warmth and love that radiated from his whole body, coupled with the sadness that she was being ripped away from him. He wanted her to take that one physical memory with her wherever she was going. The imprint of his hands on her. He wished it to be a reminder that she was a good creature, and loved, and that there were places on the continuum where love and kindness still existed, even if she did not share that world presently. She did not deserve this. But things happened. They happened.

In Group, Casper doesn't like us to say cut or cutting or burn or stab. She says it doesn't matter what you do or how you do it: it's all the same. You could drink, slice, do meth, snort coke, burn, cut, stab, slash, rip out your eyelashes, or fuck till you bleed and it's all the same thing: self-harm. She says: whether someone has hurt you or made you feel bad or unworthy or unclean, rather than taking the rational step of realizing that person is an asshole or a psycho and should be shot or strung up and you should stay the fuck away from them, instead we internalize our abuse and begin to blame and punish ourselves and weirdly, once you start cutting or burning or fucking because you feel so shitty and unworthy, your body starts to release this neat-feeling shit called endorphins and you feel so fucking high the world is like cotton candy at the best and most colorful state fair in the world, only bloody and stuffed with infection. But the fucked-up part is once you start self-harming, you can never not be a creepy freak, because your whole body is now a scarred and charred battlefield and nobody likes that on a girl, nobody will love that, and so all of us, every one, is screwed, inside and out. Wash, rinse, fucking repeat.

Sometimes family hurts you more than they could ever love you. That’s a truth a lot of people don’t want to hear, but sometimes people get the opposite. They get the families that love you more than they could ever hurt you. Those people are the luckiest in the world. You know what pisses me off? Is that they probably don’t even know it. They don’t know how lucky they are, but, Sam, you’re one of them.” I sucked in a breath. That ache was a stabbing pain now. She leaned forward. Some of her long hair fell forward, but she ignored it as she grasped my shoulders. Malinda moved so we were eye-level. “Forget the people who’ve hurt you. You don’t have them anymore, but you have two others that’ll do anything for you. Mason and Logan would move mountains for you. I see how you are with them. You love them, but you’re scared to let yourself be happy. Why? Because that’s when they’ll leave? Is that what you think? You’ve got it all wrong. Those two will never leave you.” She tapped my chest. Once. Twice. “You. You’re the one that’s going to hurt them. You have that power, and you don’t know it. You could rip those two apart in a second, and they’re the ones who are scared of you. Not the other way around. You need to recognize the real situation.

Our faces are so close to one another right now, and all I can do is selfishly think how easy it would be for me to lean forward and kiss him like I’ve dreamed about for the last couple of weeks. One kiss, and then I’d let him go. One kiss, to replace the one stolen from me. This would be my first kiss, not what happened with Poseidon. Because a kiss should be born from love, and want, and need. A kiss should be beautiful, something a girl can hold onto for the rest of her life, to pull out in her memory whenever she wants butterflies to come back. A kiss shouldn’t be roughly ripped away from her and turned into a thing of nightmares.

He nearly groaned out loud. How could he have let his experience with Sana make him so cynical, so judgemental? He loved Aisha, but he hadn’t trusted her. And so, he had lost her. It felt as if his heart was being ripped out of his chest. His jaw clenched. The pain of trusting the wrong person? It was nothing compared to the pain of not trusting the right one. The repercussions of valuing an undeserving woman? They were far less devastating than those of maligning an honourable woman. He recalled the agonised, betrayed expression that had replaced Aisha’s initial shock at his ill-founded accusations, and a shudder tore through him. It felt as if his soul was shrivelling inside his body. No matter how much it hurt to have your trust broken, it hurt a million times more to break someone’s trust in you.

They didn't exchange a single word. But in the weeks that followed, Trip spent his days wandering the halls, hoping for Lux to appear, the most naked person with clothes on he had ever seen. Even in sensible school shoes, she shuffled as though barefoot, and the baggy apparel Mrs. Lisbon bought for her only increased her appeal, as though after undressing she had put on whatever was handy. In corduroys her thighs rubbed together, buzzing, and there was always at least one untidy marvel to unravel him: an untucked shirttail, a sock with a hole, a ripped seam showing underarm hair. She carted her books from class to class but never opened them. Her pens and pencils were as temporary as Cinderella's broom. When she smiled, her mouth showed too many teeth, but at night Trip Fontaine dreamed of being bitten by each one.

Her eyes widened as he guided her backward until she was trapped against the bed. He turned her around so that she faced it. “You remember when we met, how you told me off in your office? Ever since then, I’ve wanted something.” He smoothed his hands up her legs and pushed up her skirt. With one sharp tug, he ripped her lacy thong and tossed it to the floor. “You at my mercy.” He heard the excited catch of her breath and bent his head to murmur in her ear. “Good thing you still have those heels on.

I’d spent months carefully winding my gift into a tight spool, only letting it out by inches, and only when I needed it. The strain of keeping it bound up had been a steady, constant reminder that I had to work to keep the life I’d built for myself out here. It was a muscle I’d carefully toned to withstand nearly any pressure. Letting it all go felt like shaking a bottle of soda and ripping off the cap. It fizzed and flooded and swept out of me, searching for the connections waiting to be made. I didn’t guide it, and I didn’t stop it—I don’t know if I could have if I tried. I was the burning center of a galaxy of faces, memories, loves, heartbreaks, disappointments, and dreams. It was like living dozens of different lives. I was lifted and shattered by it, how strangely beautiful it was to feel their minds linked with my own. The spinning inside my head slowed with the movement around me. I felt time hovering nearby, waiting to resume its usual tempo. The darkness slid into the edges of my vision, seeping through my mind like a drop of ink in water. But I was in control of the moment, and there was one last thing that I needed to say to them, one last idea to imprint in their minds. “I’m Green.

I don’t have any love for the family of House Fortuna, but no one should have their throat ripped into and their heart ripped out.” Jacks disagreed with his last statement.

I hate the bitch, but I also love her in that I’m going to rip your heart out and hang it on my wall so no one else can have it kind of way.

Their conflicting sounds oppose one another, outdo one another, and fight to be better than one another. The crescendo of the heart being ripped to shreds, loves….

To embellish reality with makeup, with silk and royal purple, isn’t that what we all should be doing? Beneath the life we live every day the silk and the purple are hiding, waiting for us. A person just has to dare to throw off his everyday clothes, to rip them off and to put on the silk and purple that exist, I know it. But we’re the ones who cover them up. Out of boredom, indifference, fear. Mostly fear. So right from the first moment I met you, my lies were always the truth: in telling them I unveiled the world for you — the hidden world, the true world. You were really the one who lied. You wanted everything to remain untouched, paradise to be paradise, and me angel. But you made a fatal mistake: you never believed me. You never understood why I lied, that through my lies I was giving you a unique gift: the truth. You always tried to control me — out of love, of course. But is there any word more ambiguous than the word “love”?

Death is deceitful, pretending that peace is on the horizon. The truth is that chaos is left in its wake, claiming the souls of those stranded in life. Death is the enemy of love in its purest form. It's the one thing that can tear our souls out and rip our hearts to pieces. The miraculous part of this process is that all it needs to do is extinguish a single, solitary breath. That's all it takes to steal the future of someone; someone who deserves to live more than all the others. If only I could capture that breath before it was taken to replace it with my own.

Look, Cat got to you because you weren't wearing your daggers. The one with the intertwined V's? It's runed to protect you from her gift. Keep them on until you find your feet, and she can't fuck with you. Same thing happened in Cordyn. You took them off to wear that lacy thing you called a dress. Fuck, I wanted to rip it off with my teeth." His jaw ticks. "You gave the daggers to me last year." My hand slides to his wrist. "I figured she'd find a way to make my life difficult for breaking the agreement, and that would inevitably involve you." He leans in. "I love you.

Ask any man what his greatest weakness is, and if he’s being honest, he will tell you it’s a woman. Not just any woman. The one woman who is capable of bringing him to his knees. The one woman who has the power to destroy him. Rip his beating heart from his chest. Ruin him. I knew that Remy was capable for doing all those things. My greatest weakness was, is, and always would be, her.

I didn't have a choice." "Are you saying...What are you saying?" Is he...could he be talking about me? He runs a hand through his hair. I've never seen him this emotional before. He's always so controlled, so sure of himself. "I'm saying you're what I want, Emma. I'm saying I'm in love with you." He steps forward and lifts his hand to my cheek, blazing a line of fire with his fingertips as they trace down to my mouth. "How do you think it would make me feel to see you with Grom?" he whispers. "Like someone ripped my heart out and put it through Rachel's meat grinder, that's how. Probably worse. It would probably kill me. Emma, please don't cry." I throw my hands in the air. "Don't cry? Are you serious? Why did you come here, Galen? Did you think it would make me feel better to know that you do love me, but that it still won't work out? That I still have to mate with Grom for the greater good? Don't you tell me not to cry, Galen! I...c...c...can't h...h...help-" The waterworks soak me. Galen looks at me, hands by his side, helpless as a trapped crab. I'm bordering on hyperventilation, and pretty soon I'll start hiccupping. This is too much. His expression is so severe, it looks like he's in physical pain. "Emma," he breathes. "Emma, does this mean you feel the same way? Do you care for me at all?" I laugh, but it sounds sharper than I intended, because of a hiccup. "What does it matter how I feel, Galen? I think we pretty much covered why. No need to rehash things, right?" "It matters, Emma." He grabs my hand and pulls me to him again. "Tell me right now. Do you care for me?" "If you can't tell that I'm stupid in love with you, Galen, then you aren't a very good ambassador for the hum-" His mouth covers mine, cutting me off. This kiss isn't gentle like the first one. It's definitely not sweet. It's rough, demanding, searching. And disorienting. There's not a part of me that isn't melting against Galen, not a part that isn't combusting with his fevered touch. I accidentally moan into his lips. He takes it for his cue to lift me off my feet, to pull me up to his height for more leverage. I take his groan for my cue to kiss him harder. He ignores his cell phone ringing in his pocket. I ignore the rest of the universe. Even when headlights approach, I'm willing to overlook their intrusion and keep kissing. But, prince that he is, Galen is a little more refined than me at this moment. He gently pries his lips from mine and sets me down. His smile is both intoxicated and intoxicating. "We still need to talk." "Right," I say, but I'm shaking my head. He laughs. "I didn't come all the way to Atlantic City to make you cry." "I'm not crying." I lean into him again. He doesn't refuse my lips, but he doesn't do them justice either, planting a measly little kiss on them before stepping back.

Love is when you endure pain for the sake of a beloved sister and husband, if that’s what it takes to nurture the child of their illicit union.” Then she glanced at Gran. “Love is sometimes doing the wrong things because you’re at your wit’s end in knowing how to help your family.” He drew her into his arms. “Love is taking chances when every rational part of you screams, ‘Don’t risk it.’ Because it’s only when your heart has been ripped open that you get a chance to find the one person capable of making it whole.” With her own heart beating wildly, she smiled at him. “And you say you aren’t poetic.” “Well,” he said, with a glint in his eye, “perhaps a few of us can be good at everything.” And as he pulled her into a dark corner and kissed her with great sweetness, she acknowledged that at some things, he was very good indeed.

Fear of the Dark I’ve always been prone to worry and anxiety, but after I became a mother, negotiating joy, gratitude, and scarcity felt like a full-time job. For years, my fear of something terrible happening to my children actually prevented me from fully embracing joy and gratitude. Every time I came too close to softening into sheer joyfulness about my children and how much I love them, I’d picture something terrible happening; I’d picture losing everything in a flash. At first I thought I was crazy. Was I the only person in the world who did this? As my therapist and I started working on it, I realized that “my too good to be true” was totally related to fear, scarcity, and vulnerability. Knowing that those are pretty universal emotions, I gathered up the courage to talk about my experiences with a group of five hundred parents who had come to one of my parenting lectures. I gave an example of standing over my daughter watching her sleep, feeling totally engulfed in gratitude, then being ripped out of that joy and gratitude by images of something bad happening to her. You could have heard a pin drop. I thought, Oh, God. I’m crazy and now they’re all sitting there like, “She’s a nut. How do we get out of here?” Then all of the sudden I heard the sound of a woman toward the back starting to cry. Not sniffle cry, but sob cry. That sound was followed by someone from the front shouting out, “Oh my God! Why do we do that? What does it mean?” The auditorium erupted in some kind of crazy parent revival. As I had suspected, I was not alone.

Time can lessen the hurt; the empty place we have can seem smaller as other things and experiences fill our life; we can forget for periods and feel as if our loved one didn't die; we can find sense in the death and understand that perhaps this death does fit into a bigger design in the world; we can learn to remember the good and hold on to that. But we cannot 'get over it,' because to get over it would mean we were not changed by the experience. It would mean we did not grow by the experience. It would mean that our loved one's death made no difference in our life. There is an interesting discussion in the Talmud, an ancient Jewish writing. Those Jews had the custom of rending their garments - literally tearing their clothes —to symbolize the ripping apart that death brings. But the question was raised, after the period of mourning, could you sew the garment up and use it again? The teachers answered yes, but when you mended it, you should not tuck the edges under so it would look as if it had never been torn. This symbolized the fact that life after grief is not the same as before. The rent will show.

Broken hearts show us we’ve grown out of one stage, by ripping us wide open for the next. We’re forced to choose what we do with all that pain: turn it against ourselves, aim it at someone else, or tap all that power and reach higher.

Ultimately, the roast turkey must be regarded as a monument to Boomer's love. Look at it now, plump and glossy, floating across Idaho as if it were a mammoth, mutated seed pod. Hear how it backfires as it passes the silver mines, perhaps in tribute to the origin of the knives and forks of splendid sterling that a roast turkey and a roast turkey alone possesses the charisma to draw forth into festivity from dark cupboards. See how it glides through the potato fields, familiarly at home among potatoes but with an air of expectation, as if waiting for the flood of gravy. The roast turkey carries with it, in its chubby hold, a sizable portion of our primitive and pagan luggage. Primitive and pagan? Us? We of the laser, we of the microchip, we of the Union Theological Seminary and Time magazine? Of course. At least twice a year, do not millions upon millions of us cybernetic Christians and fax machine Jews participate in a ritual, a highly stylized ceremony that takes place around a large dead bird? And is not this animal sacrificed, as in days of yore, to catch the attention of a divine spirit, to show gratitude for blessings bestowed, and to petition for blessings coveted? The turkey, slain, slowly cooked over our gas or electric fires, is the central figure at our holy feast. It is the totem animal that brings our tribe together. And because it is an awkward, intractable creature, the serving of it establishes and reinforces the tribal hierarchy. There are but two legs, two wings, a certain amount of white meat, a given quantity of dark. Who gets which piece; who, in fact, slices the bird and distributes its limbs and organs, underscores quite emphatically the rank of each member in the gathering. Consider that the legs of this bird are called 'drumsticks,' after the ritual objects employed to extract the music from the most aboriginal and sacred of instruments. Our ancestors, kept their drums in public, but the sticks, being more actively magical, usually were stored in places known only to the shaman, the medicine man, the high priest, of the Wise Old Woman. The wing of the fowl gives symbolic flight to the soul, but with the drumstick is evoked the best of the pulse of the heart of the universe. Few of us nowadays participate in the actual hunting and killing of the turkey, but almost all of us watch, frequently with deep emotion, the reenactment of those events. We watch it on TV sets immediately before the communal meal. For what are footballs if not metaphorical turkeys, flying up and down a meadow? And what is a touchdown if not a kill, achieved by one or the other of two opposing tribes? To our applause, great young hungers from Alabama or Notre Dame slay the bird. Then, the Wise Old Woman, in the guise of Grandma, calls us to the table, where we, pretending to be no longer primitive, systematically rip the bird asunder. Was Boomer Petaway aware of the totemic implications when, to impress his beloved, he fabricated an outsize Thanksgiving centerpiece? No, not consciously. If and when the last veil dropped, he might comprehend what he had wrought. For the present, however, he was as ignorant as Can o' Beans, Spoon, and Dirty Sock were, before Painted Stick and Conch Shell drew their attention to similar affairs. Nevertheless, it was Boomer who piloted the gobble-stilled butterball across Idaho, who negotiated it through the natural carving knives of the Sawtooth Mountains, who once or twice parked it in wilderness rest stops, causing adjacent flora to assume the appearance of parsley.

Did you find anything special?' Blackie asked. T. nodded. 'Come over here,' he said, 'and look.' Out of both pockets he drew bundles of pound notes. 'Old Misery's savings,' he said. 'Mike ripped out the mattress, but he missed them.' 'What are you going to do? Share them?' 'We aren't thieves,' T. said. 'Nobody's going to steal anything from this house. I kept these for you and me - a celebration.' He knelt down on the floor and counted them out - there were seventy in all. 'We'll burn them,' he said, 'one by one,' and taking it in turns they held a note upwards and lit the top corner, so that the flame burnt slowly towards their fingers. The grey ash floated above them and fell on their heads like age. 'I'd like to see Old Misery's face when we are through,' T. said. 'You hate him a lot?' Blackie asked. 'Of course I don't hate him,' T. said. 'There'd be no fun if I hated him.' The last burning note illuminated his brooding face. 'All this hate and love,' he said, 'it's soft, it's hooey. There's only things, Blackie,' and he looked round the room crowded with the unfamiliar shadows of half things, broken things, former things. 'I'll race you home, Blackie,' he said. ("The Destructors")

Look,” I say, shouting a little over the chaos. “I don’t love this situation, either. It feels really weird to hit a girl. But considering the fact that you just murdered me a minute ago, I think I’m entitled to retribution. So I’m giving you two options: show me how to get out of here, or hand over your knife.” “Go to hell.” “Did one of those broken ribs puncture a lung? Can you feel yourself dying?” “Have you ever had your intestines ripped out of your body? I hear it’s excruciating.

Love’ is one of those words, like ‘Freedom’, ‘Security’ and ‘Democracy’, that has been captured and tortured until it gives in to its polar opposite. Love is supposed to be the one thing you can’t kill. And maybe that’s true, if you come at it with a gun in your fist. But there are other things you can do to undermine the power of human passion. You can rip it away from kids and redeliver it processed and packaged in pink and blue cans for somebody else’s profit, like powdered milk you pay for with your heart’s blood. You can mangle it into a mode of production. You can use it to isolate people in antagonistic pairs and let them blame each other for the structural lack of sweetness in the world. You can privatise passion, annex affection. You can create the appearance of scarcity where there ought to be abundance. You can make the search for simple connection into a miserable, exhausting ritual that demands rigid gender conformity and represses the human spirit. And that’s how you kill love.

Then came that July Sunday afternoon when our house suddenly emptied, and we were the only ones there, and fire tore through my guts—because “fire” was the first and easiest word that came to me later that same evening when I tried to make sense of it in my diary. I’d waited and waited in my room pinioned to my bed in a trancelike state of terror and anticipation. Not a fire of passion, not a ravaging fire, but something paralyzing, like the fire of cluster bombs that suck up the oxygen around them and leave you panting because you’ve been kicked in the gut and a vacuum has ripped up every living lung tissue and dried your mouth, and you hope nobody speaks, because you can’t talk, and you pray no one asks you to move, because your heart is clogged and beats so fast it would sooner spit out shards of glass than let anything else flow through its narrowed chambers. Fire like fear, like panic, like one more minute of this and I’ll die if he doesn’t knock at my door, but I’d sooner he never knock than knock now.

When the high-speed chases and mandatory shoot-outs become too repetitive, I head over to the revival houses and watch gentler movies, in which the couples sleep in separate beds and everyone wears a hat. As my ticket is ripped, I briefly consider all the constructive things I could be doing. I think of the parks and the restaurants, or the pleasantries I'll never use on the friends I am failing to make. I think of the great city teaming on the other side of that curtain, and then the lights go down, and I love Paris.

My bad mood returns like an unwanted rash. “I got in a fight with Logan. And that’s all I’m saying on the subject, because if I talk about it right now, it’ll just piss me off again and then I’ll be too distracted to produce Dumb and Dumber’s show.” We both glance at the main booth, where Evelyn is using the reflection on her water glass to check her makeup, dabbing delicately at her eye shadow. Pace is engrossed with his phone, his chair tipped back so far that I predict a very loud disaster in the near future. “God, I love them,” Daisy says with a snicker. “I don’t think I’ve ever met two more self-absorbed people.” Morris saunters out of the booth and wanders over to us. He notices Daisy’s shirt and says, “Sweetheart, we’re at work. Show some decorum.” “Says the guy who ripped this shirt off me in the supply closet.” Rolling her eyes, she takes a step away. “I’m going to make myself presentable in the bathroom. I’d do it out here, but I’m scared Dumber might take a picture and post it on a porn site.” “Wait, the names Dumb and Dumber actually correspond to each of them?” Morris says in surprise. “I thought it was more of a general thing. Which one is Dumber?” The second the question leaves his mouth, a muffled crash reverberates from the booth, and we all turn to see Pace tangled up on the floor. Yup, the guy who spent an hour regaling me about his cow-tipping days back in Iowa? Tipped himself right over. From behind the glass, Pace bounces to his feet, notices us staring, and mouths the words, “I’m okay!” Morris sighs. “I withdraw the question

I want to apologize to you,” she says calmly. “Oh yeah? For what?” I don’t have time for this. We don’t have time for this. I push away thoughts of what will happen to Hana even if I manage to escape. She’ll be here, in the house . . . My stomach is clenching and unclenching. I’m worried the bread will come straight back up. I have to stay focused. What happens to Hana isn’t my concern, and it isn’t my fault, either. “For telling the regulators about 37 Brooks,” she says. “For telling them about you and Alex.” Just like that, my brain powers down. “What?" “I told them.” She lets out a tiny exhalation, as though saying the words has given her relief. “I’m sorry. I was jealous.” I can’t speak. I’m swimming through a fog. “Jealous?” I manage to spit out. “I—I wanted what you had with Alex. I was confused. I didn’t understand what I was doing.” She shakes her head again. I have a swinging, seasick feeling. It doesn’t make any sense. Hana—golden girl Hana, my best friend, fearless and reckless. I trusted her. I loved her. “You were my best friend.” “I know.” Again she looks troubled, as though trying to recall the meaning of the words. “You had everything.” I can’t stop my voice from rising. The anger is vibrating, ripping through me like a live current. “Perfect life. Perfect grades. Everything.” I gesture to the spotless kitchen, to the sunshine pouring over the marble counters like drizzled butter. “I had nothing. He was my one thing. My only—” The sickness surges up and I take a step forward, clenching my fists, blind with rage. “Why couldn’t you let me have it? Why did you have to take it? Why did you always take everything?

At childhood’s end, the houses petered out into playing fields, the factory, allotments kept, like mistresses, by kneeling married men, the silent railway line, the hermit’s caravan, till you came at last to the edge of the woods. It was there that I first clapped eyes on the wolf. He stood in a clearing, reading his verse out loud in his wolfy drawl, a paperback in his hairy paw, red wine staining his bearded jaw. What big ears he had! What big eyes he had! What teeth! In the interval, I made quite sure he spotted me, sweet sixteen, never been, babe, waif, and bought me a drink, my first. You might ask why. Here’s why. Poetry. The wolf, I knew, would lead me deep into the woods, away from home, to a dark tangled thorny place lit by the eyes of owls. I crawled in his wake, my stockings ripped to shreds, scraps of red from my blazer snagged on twig and branch, murder clues. I lost both shoes but got there, wolf’s lair, better beware. Lesson one that night, breath of the wolf in my ear, was the love poem. I clung till dawn to his thrashing fur, for what little girl doesn’t dearly love a wolf? Then I slid from between his heavy matted paws and went in search of a living bird – white dove – which flew, straight, from my hands to his hope mouth. One bite, dead. How nice, breakfast in bed, he said, licking his chops. As soon as he slept, I crept to the back of the lair, where a whole wall was crimson, gold, aglow with books. Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head, warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood. But then I was young – and it took ten years in the woods to tell that a mushroom stoppers the mouth of a buried corpse, that birds are the uttered thought of trees, that a greying wolf howls the same old song at the moon, year in, year out, season after season, same rhyme, same reason. I took an axe to a willow to see how it wept. I took an axe to a salmon to see how it leapt. I took an axe to the wolf as he slept, one chop, scrotum to throat, and saw the glistening, virgin white of my grandmother’s bones. I filled his old belly with stones. I stitched him up. Out of the forest I come with my flowers, singing, all alone. Little Red-Cap

At times he could be charming and gracious, which was what had made it so hard to leave him. His ability to be tender and loving was equal to his capacity to be deceptive and underhanded. He could rip out my heart and then be the first one to pick it up and hand it back to me.

I have been with a hundred women, but never loved one until her. I could be with a thousand more and never find another Layana. She is beautiful, classy, but with a sharp edge that defines her personality, a thread of dark that complements all of her light. One that will cut you should you cross her. One that will fight for her wants, her needs, her opinions. She stares in my eyes and loves me with a vehemence all her own. A scary, passionate type of love. One that rips away all pretenses and allows us to love each other bare and without consequence.

Still, this moment belongs to the two of them, Mom and this handsome stranger. He reaches the passenger side door and stares down at her with steely violet eyes-down at my mother who never cries, down at my mother who’s now bawling like a spanked child-his face contorted in a rainbow of so many emotions, some that I can’t even name. Then Grom the Triton king sinks to his knees in front of her, and a single tear spills down his face. “Nalia,” he whispers. And then my mother slaps him. It’s not the kind of slap you get for talking back. It’s not the kind of punch she dealt Galen and Toraf in our kitchen. It’s the kind of slap a woman gives a man when he’s hurt her deeply. And Grom accepts it with grace. “I looked for you,” she shouts, even though he’s inches from her. Slowly, as if in a show of peace, he takes the hand that slapped him and sandwiches it between his own. He seems to revel in the feel of her touch. His face is pure tenderness, his voice like a massage to the nerves. “And I looked for you.” “Your pulse was gone,” she insists. By now she chokes back sobs between words. She’s fighting for control. I’ve never seen my mother fight for control. “As was yours.” I realize Grom knows what not to say, what not to do to provoke her. He is the complete opposite of her, or maybe just a completion of her. Her eyes focus on his wrist, and tears slip down her face, leaving faint trails of mascara on her cheeks. He smiles and slowly pulls his hand away. I think he’s going to show her the bracelet he’s wearing, but instead he rips it off his wrist and holds it out for her inspection. From where I’m standing it looks like a single black ball tied to some sort of string. By my mom’s expression, this black ball has meaning. So much meaning that I think she’s forgotten to breathe. “My pearl,” she whispers. “I thought I’d lost it.” He encloses it in her hand. “This isn’t your pearl, love. That one was lost in the explosion with you. For almost an entire season, I scoured the oyster beds, looking for another one that would do. I don’t know why, but I thought maybe if I found another perfect pearl, I would somehow find you, too. When I found this though, it didn’t bring me the peace I’d hoped for. But I couldn’t bring myself to discard it. I’ve worn it on my wrist ever since.” This is all it takes for my mom to throw herself into his arms, bringing Rachel partially with her. Even so, it’s probably the most moving moment I’ve ever encountered in my eighteen years. Or at least it would be, if my mom weren’t clinging to a man who is not my dad.

The Government set the stage economically by informing everyone that we were in a depression period, with very pointed allusions to the 1930s. The period just prior to our last 'good' war. ... Boiled down, our objective was to make killing and military life seem like adventurous fun, so for our inspiration we went back to the Thirties as well. It was pure serendipity. Inside one of the Scripter offices there was an old copy of Doc Smith's first LENSMAN space opera. It turned out that audiences in the 1970s were more receptive to the sort of things they scoffed at as juvenilia in the 1930s. Our drugs conditioned them to repeat viewings, simultaneously serving the ends of profit and positive reinforcement. The movie we came up with stroked all the correct psychological triggers. The fact that it grossed more money than any film in history at the time proved how on target our approach was.' 'Oh my God... said Jonathan, his mouth stalling the open position. 'Six months afterward we ripped ourselves off and got secondary reinforcement onto television. We pulled a 40 share. The year after that we phased in the video games, experimenting with non-narcotic hypnosis, using electrical pulses, body capacitance, and keying the pleasure centers of the brain with low voltage shocks. Jesus, Jonathan, can you *see* what we've accomplished? In something under half a decade we've programmed an entire generation of warm bodies to go to war for us and love it. They buy what we tell them to buy. Music, movies, whole lifestyles. And they hate who we tell them to. ... It's simple to make our audiences slaver for blood; that past hasn't changed since the days of the Colosseum. We've conditioned a whole population to live on the rim of Apocalypse and love it. They want to kill the enemy, tear his heart out, go to war so their gas bills will go down! They're all primed for just that sort of denouemment, ti satisfy their need for linear storytelling in the fictions that have become their lives! The system perpetuates itself. Our own guinea pigs pay us money to keep the mechanisms grinding away. If you don't believe that, just check out last year's big hit movies... then try to tell me the target demographic audience isn't waiting for marching orders. ("Incident On A Rainy Night In Beverly Hills")

You know what is the worst thing in the world? You are amidst this crowd, a swarm of people, Who think they connect with you, Every one of them, in their own way. But in reality, you are being ripped apart, Connecting with each one of them. It is a constant struggle to connect with someone, To be heard,to be understood,to be loved, to be accepted. And it is done with a glimpse of hope, That someone from these known and unknown faces, Will hear you out, someone with a warm & genuine smile, Will touch your heart. And that's precisely when,perhaps,you would say, Yes, THIS IS ME.

Gotta write a letter to you, If you get a chance, do read it. Don't know how long I can endure, But if you get a chance, do read it. They say, time heals all wounds, But there is no treatment to my condition. If you get a chance, come and sit by me, With you by my side even death is salvation. The world hails one a pillar, an epitome of strength, But inside, one battles with apocalypse everyday. Sipping poison like delicate wine, time after time, A loveless fakir gets used to be used and thrown away. Read me or rip me, it is up to you. So long as the heart beats, I'm waiting for you.

5. When Begging Ends I love the idea of Divine Source. It reminds us that everything, the fulfillment of every need, always emanates from the One. So if you learn how to keep your vibration high and attuned to That, whatever is needed to sustain you can always occur, often in surprising and delightful ways. Your Source is never a particular person, place, or thing, but God Herself. You never have to beg. Furthermore, Divine Source says that whatever resonates with you will always find you. That which does not, will fall away. It’s that simple. When Outrageous Openness first came out, I experienced this as I took the book around—some stores were simply not drawn to it. But knowing about Divine Source and resonance, I didn’t care. I remember taking it to a spiritual bookstore in downtown San Francisco. The desultory manager sort of half-growled, “Oh, we have a long, long wait here. You can leave a copy for our ‘pile’ in the back room. Then you could call a ton and plead with us. If you get lucky, maybe one day we’ll stock it. Just keep hoping.” “Oh, my God, no!” I shuddered. “Why would I keep twisting your arm? It’ll go easily to the places that are right. You never have to convince someone. The people who are right will just know.” He looked stunned when I thanked him, smiling, and left. And sure enough, other store clerks were so excited, even from the cover alone. They nearly ripped the book out of my hands as I walked in. When I brought it to the main bookstore in San Francisco’s Castro district, I noticed the manager striding toward me was wearing a baseball cap with an image of the goddess Lakshmi. “Great sign,” I mused. He held the book for a second without even cracking it open, then showed the cover to a coworker, yelling, “Hey, let’s give this baby a coming-out party!” So a few weeks later, they did. Sake, fortune cookies, and all. Because you see, what’s meant for you will always, always find you. You never have to be bothered by the people who aren’t meant to understand. And anyway, sometimes years later, they are ready . . . and they do. Change me Divine Beloved into One who knows that You alone are my Source. Let me trust that You fling open every door at the right time. Free me from the illusion of rejection, competition, and scarcity. Fill me with confidence and faith, knowing I never have to beg, just gratefully receive.

So it is with the places preparing to teach us. It's only when the heart begins to beat wildly and without pattern—when it begins to realize its boundlessness—that its newly adamant pulse bangs on the walls of its cage and is bruised by its enclosure... To feel the heart pound is only the beginning. Next is to feel the hurt—the tearing of the psyche—the prelude of entry into the place one has always feared. One fears that place because of being drawn to it, loving it, and wanting to be taught by it. Without the need to be taught, who would feel the psyche rip? Without the bruise, who would know where the walls are?

It’d been a year since The Breakup—everyone has at least one in their lives. You know the one, right? The kind of breakup from a love you thought would last your entire lifetime, only to find your heart ripped out with a spork by your former lover and placed on a silver platter with FUCK YOU written in ketchup.

She reaches into the unknown and claims his hand, clasping it as if he might evaporate into the night. She’s petrified. Not of the monstrosities prowling the island, but of the demon inside herself. The one about to rip apart her heart and mind to attain a selfish freedom. And it might all be a lie, placed there by the Society.

So what happened?" "I don't know." Another glance to ensure his continued state of Not Looking, and then I rip off my clothes in one fast swoop. I am now officially stark naked in the room with the most beautiful boy I know. Funny,but this isn't how I imagined this moment. No.Not funny.One hundred percent the exact opposite of funny. "I think I maybe,possibly, vaguely remember hitting the snooze button." I jabber to cover my mortification. "Only I guess it was the off button.But I had the alarm on my phone set,too, so I don't know what happened." Underwear,on. "Did you turn the ringer back on last night?" "What?" I hop into my jeans, a noise he seems to determinedly ignore.His ears are apple red. "You went to see a film,right? Don't you set your mobile to silent at the theater?" He's right.I'm so stupid. If I hadn't taken Meredith to A Hard Day's Night, a Beatles movie I know she loves, I would have never turned it off. We'd already be in a taxi to the airport. "The taxi!" I tug my sweater over my head and look up to find myself standing across from a mirror. A mirror St. Clair is facing. "It's all right," he says. "I told the driver to wait when I came up here. We'll just have to tip him a little extra." His head is still down. I don't think he saw anything.I clear my throat, and he glances up. Our eyes meet in the mirror,and he jumps. "God! I didn't...I mean,not until just now..." "Cool.Yeah,fine." I try to shake it off by looking away,and he does the same. His cheeks are blazing.I edge past him and rinse the white crust off my face while he throws my toothbrush and deodorant and makeup into my luggage, and then we tear downstairs and into the lobby.

But she still found a lot of these stories incredibly tedious. Many were about men rescuing women, or women falling in love with men in ways she couldn’t relate to. She couldn’t see herself ever falling for a man—but that’s how all the stories went, if they had love in them at all. Every single one. Was there something wrong with her?

The most beautiful among us all seem to be slightly broken, women especially. The ones worth knowing are beyond repair. She’ll always be slightly off centered. A clock, never set perfectly, but you knew could still sing beautifully. And fools we are for attempting to fix her. Just read her, learn her, love her. Don’t try to make sense of her past, or dare predict her future. Who she was, is not who she is, and is certainly not who she would be. You’re not meant to understand her entirely. Because she’s not sure who she is exactly. Let her sing her song. Watch her dance wildly to it. It’s her time. Repairing that would only break her heart. And I’d rather be ripped apart from her than rip a part from her.

All right," Harry said coldly. "I'll answer your original question, then. You asked why Dark Wizards are afraid of death. Pretend, Headmaster, that you really believed in souls. Pretend that anyone could verify the existence of souls at any time, pretend that nobody cried at funerals because they knew their loved ones were still alive. Now can you imagine destroying a soul? Ripping it to shreds so that nothing remains to go on its next great adventure? Can you imagine what a terrible thing that would be, the worst crime that had ever been committed in the history of the universe, which you would do anything to prevent from happening even once? Because that's what Death really is - the annihilation of a soul!

Nick grinned, swooping in for another kiss and then leaning back and scruffing his hair up. “Harriet Manners, I’m about to give you six stamps. Then I’m going to write something on a piece of paper and put it in an envelope with your address on it.” “OK …” “Then I’m going to put the envelope on the floor and spin us as fast as I can. As soon as either of us manage to stick a stamp on it, I’m going to race to the postbox and post it unless you can catch me first. If you win, you can read it.” Nick was obviously faster than me, but he didn’t know where the nearest postbox was. “Deal,” I agreed, yawning and rubbing my eyes. “But why six stamps?” “Just wait and see.” A few seconds later, I understood. As we spun in circles with our hands stretched out, one of my stamps got stuck to the ground at least a metre away from the envelope. Another ended up on a daisy. A third somehow got stuck to the roundabout. One of Nick’s ended up on his nose. And every time we both missed, we laughed harder and harder and our kisses got dizzier and dizzier until the whole world was a giggling, kissing, spinning blur. Finally, when we both had one stamp left, I stopped giggling. I had to win this. So I swallowed, wiped my eyes and took a few deep breaths. Then I reached out my hand. “Too late!” Nick yelled as I opened my eyes again. “Got it, Manners!” And he jumped off the still-spinning roundabout with the envelope held high over his head. So I promptly leapt off too. Straight into a bush. Thanks to a destabilised vestibular system – which is the upper portion of the inner ear – the ground wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Nick, in the meantime, had ended up flat on his back on the grass next to me. With a small shout I leant down and kissed him hard on the lips. “HA!” I shouted, grabbing the envelope off him and trying to rip it open. “I don’t think so,” he grinned, jumping up and wrapping one arm round my waist while he retrieved it again. Then he started running in a zigzag towards the postbox. A few seconds later, I wobbled after him. And we stumbled wonkily down the road, giggling and pulling at each other’s T-shirts and hanging on to tree trunks and kissing as we each fought for the prize. Finally, he picked me up and, without any effort, popped me on top of a high wall. Like Humpty Dumpty. Or some kind of really unathletic cat. “Hey!” I shouted as he whipped the envelope out of my hands and started sprinting towards the postbox at the bottom of the road. “That’s not fair!” “Course it is,” he shouted back. “All’s fair in love and war.” And Nick kissed the envelope then put it in the postbox with a flourish. I had to wait three days. Three days of lingering by the front door. Three days of lifting up the doormat, just in case it had accidentally slipped under there. Finally, the letter arrived: crumpled and stained with grass. Ha. Told you I was faster. LBxx

They loved the sea. They taught themselves to sail, to navigate and read the weather. Without their mother's knowledge and long before she thought them old enough to sail outside the harbor, they were piloting their catboat all the way to the Isles of Shoals. They were on the return leg of one such excursion when the fickle weather of early spring took an abrupt turn and the sky darkened and the sun vanished and the wind came squalling off the open sea. They were a half mile from the harbor when the storm overtook them. The rain struck in a slashing torrent and the swells hove them so high they felt they might be sent flying--then dropped them into troughs so deep they could see nothing but walls of water the color of iron. They feared the sail would be ripped away. Samuel Thomas wrestled the tiller and John Roger bailed in a frenzy and both were wide-eyed with euphoric terror as time and again they were nearly capsized before at last making the harbor. When they got home and Mary Margaret saw their sodden state she scolded them for dunces and wondered aloud how they could do so well in their schooling when they didn't have sense enough to get out of the rain.

The truth of it was he didn't want her. He wanted Mary Kate with every cell of his body. He missed everything about her. The feel of her sleeping at his side. Her gentle snores. Her soft brown curls tickling his nose enough to wake him from a sound sleep even on nights when he needed it most. Her smile. The smell of her. At odd moments he thought he had heard her laughter, or he'd catch a glimpse of her in the corner of an eye, but all of it was a lie, and every time it happened it was as if someone had ripped a deep wound in his chest. The pain was raw enough to make him want to take a razor to his wrist, but each time he considered acting upon the idea something stopped him, and so, he stumbled on barely alive and wishing for an end. At times he couldn't breathe, couldn't move without wanting to scream.

And it’s not because I’m super ripped (I’m not) or have a twelve inch penis (alas) or make a million dollars a year (not even close). It’s because I’m good to them. I treat the women I’m with like goddesses. I make sure they have at least one orgasm, I always give a warning during a blowjob, I never complain about wearing a condom, and I encourage them to tell me exactly what they want in bed. Then I do it.

As she walked out of the cave she passed Annwyl walking in. The girl had her swords in one hand. The other hand held her ripped shirt and bindings over her ample breasts. Her brows angled down into a dark frown and she wouldn’t even look at Morfyd as she passed. “How did that talk go then?” Morfyd called over her shoulder. “Shut. Up.” Morfyd laughed as she advanced into the glen toward the clearing where she could take off. She rounded a corner and came upon her brother, his chainmail shirt and sword in his big hand, heading toward the hidden entrance of his cave. She watched him as he passed and she noticed the long scratches across his back. “How did that talk go then?” Morfyd called over her shoulder. “Shut. Up.” Morfyd shook her head. If love always made you this pathetic, she wanted nothing to do with it.

You hate the very source of your life, it’s ultimate basis—for there’s no denying it, ‘sex is fundamental. And you hate it, hate it.’ ‘Me?’ It was a novel accusation. Spandrell was accustomed to hearing himself blamed for his excessive love of women and the sensual pleasures. ‘Not only you. All these people.’ With a jerk of his head he indicated the other diners. ‘And all the respectable ones too. Practically everyone. It’s the disease of modern man. I call it Jesus’s disease on the analogy of Bright’s disease. Or rather Jesus’s and Newton’s disease; for the scientists are as much responsible as the Christians. So are the big business men, for that matter. It’s Jesus’s and Newton’s and Henry Ford’s disease. Between them, the three have pretty well killed us. Ripped the life out of our bodies and stuffed us with hatred.’ Rampion

It all got too busy, suddenly. Troops were getting into battles at the Moro Bridge and then into Urbino. Maybe in Urbino I stopped. You felt you could be shot any time there, not just if you were a soldier, but a priest or a nurse. It was a rabbit warren, those narrow tilted streets. Soldiers were coming in with just bits of their bodies, falling in love with me for an hour and then dying. It was important to remember their names. But I kept seeing the child whenever they died. Being washed away. Some would sit up and rip all their dressings off trying to breathe better. Some would be worried about tiny scratches on their arms when they died. Then the bubble in the mouth. That little pop. I leaned forward to close a dead soldier’s eyes, and he open them and sniggered, “Can’t wait to have me dead? You bitch!” He sat up and swept everything on my tray to the floor. So furious. Who would want to die like that? To die with that kind of anger. You bitch! After that I always waited for the bubble in their mouths. I know death now, David. I know all the smells, I know how to divert them from agony. When to give the quick jolt of morphine in a major vein. The saline solution. To make them empty their bowels before they die. Every damn general should have had my job. Every damn general. It should have been a pre-requisite for any river crossing. Who the hell were we to be given this responsibility, expected to be wise as old priests, to know how to lead people towards something no one wanted and somehow make them feel comfortable. I could never believe in all those services they gave for the dead. Their vulgar rhetoric. How dare they! How dare they talk like that about a human being dying.

People share books they love. They want to spread to friends and family the goodness that they felt when reading the book or the ideas they found in the pages. In sharing a loved book, a reader is trying to share the same excitement, pleasure, chills, and thrills of reading that they themselves experienced. Why else share? Sharing a love of books and of one particular book is a good thing. But it is also a tricky maneuver, for both sides. The giver of the book is not exactly ripping open her soul for a free look, but when she hands over the book with the comment that it is one of her favorites, such an admission is very close to the baring of the soul. We are what we love to read, and when we admit to loving a book, we admit that the book represents some aspect of ourselves truly, whether it is that we are suckers for romance or pining for adventure or secretly fascinated by crime.

A month from now, in early April, at the time when far away, outside the city, the water hyacinths would be covering every inch of bayou, lagoon, creek, and backwater with a spiritual-mauve to obscene-purple, violent, vulgar, fleshy, solid, throttling mass of bloom over the black water, and the first heartbreaking, misty green, like girlhood dreams, on the old cypresses would have settled down to be leaf and not a damned thing else, and the arm-thick, mud-colored, slime-slick mocassins would heave out of the swamp and try to cross the highway and your front tire hitting one would give a slight bump and make a sound like kerwhush and a tinny thump when he slapped heavily up against the underside of the fender, and the insects would come boiling out of the swamps and day and night the whole air would vibrate with them with a sound like an electric fan, and if it was night the owls back in the swamps would be whoo-ing and moaning like love and death and damnation, or one would sail out of the pitch dark into the rays of your headlights and plunge against the radiator to explode like a ripped feather bolster, and the fields would be deep in that rank, hairy or slick, juicy, sticky grass which the cattle gorge on and never get flesh over their ribs for that grass is in that black soil and no matter how far the roots could ever go, if the roots were God knows how deep, there would never be anything but that black, grease-clotted soil and no stone down there to put calcium into that grass—well, a month from now, in early April, when all those things would be happening beyond the suburbs, the husks of the old houses in the street where Anne Stanton and I were walking would, if it were evening, crack and spill out onto the stoops and into the street all that life which was now sealed up within.

He looked at me, and I saw the knowledge in his eyes. The horror. “I didn’t know, Gideon. I swear to God, I didn’t know.” My heart jerked in my chest, then began to pound. My mouth went dry. “I, uh, went to see Terrence Lucas.” Chris’s voice grew hoarse. “ Barged into his office. He denied it, the lying son of a bitch, but I could see it on his face.” The brandy sloshed in my glass. I set it down carefully, feeling the floor shift under my feet. Eva had confronted Lucas, but Chris..? “I decked him, knocked him out could, but Good … I wanted to take one of those awards on his shelves and bash his head in.” “Stop.” The word broke from my throat like slivers of glass. “And the asshole who did … That asshole is dead. I can’t get to him. Goddamn it.” Chris dropped the tumbler onto the granite with a thud, but it was the sob that tore out of him that nearly shattered me. “Hell, Gideon. It was my job to protect you. And I failed.” “Stop!” I pushed off the counter, my hands clenching. “Don’t fucking look at me like that!” He trembled visibly, but didn’t back down. “I had to tell you –“ His wrinkled dress shirt was in my fist, his feet dangling above the floor. “Stop talking. Now!” Tears lipped down his face. “I love you like my own. Always have.” I shoved him away. Turned my back to him when he stumbled and hit the wall. I left, crossing the living room without seeing it. “I’m not expecting your forgiveness,” he called after me, tears clogging his words. “I don’t deserve it. But you need to hear that I would’ve ripped him apart with my bare hands if I’d known.” I rounded on him, feeling the sickness clawing up from my gut and burning my throat. “What the fuck do you want?” Chris pulled his shoulders back. He faced me with reddened eyes and wet cheeks, shaking but too stupid to run. “I want you to know that you’re not alone.” Alone. Yes. Far away from the pity and guilt and pain staring out at me through his tears. “Get out.” Nodding, he headed toward the foyer. I stood immobile, my chest heaving, my eyes burning. Words backed up in my throat, violence pounded in the painful clench of my fists. He stopped before he left the room, facing me. “I’m glad you told Eva.” “Don’t talk about her.” I couldn’t bear to even think of her. Not now, when I was so close to losing it. He left. The weight of the day crashed onto my shoulders, dropping me to my knees. I broke.

We must learn to care for one another across all boundaries and borders and build a movement of movements rooted in a love so fierce that when a Mexican child is ripped from the arms of his mother at the border, and when a black child is ripped from the arms of her mother as she’s arrested on the streets of New York, and when a white child is ripped from the arms of her mother in a courtroom in Oklahoma, we feel the same pain, the same agony, as though it were our own children.

I'd turned into someone who realized that when a loved one leaves, she'll take with her the tree inside of you that was now inhabiting every single inch of you. Your heart will be left in tatters and caked with mud, like a tree ripped from its place. And where the tree once was, there would only be a gaping hole. It was a painful and crushing thought. Only those who've had those trees inside of them have the right to discuss the astronomical losses and profits life throws at us.

I never wanted it to end. I wondered if it felt like this the first time. Seeing him. Really seeing him. He wiped his eyes. “You really want to know, don’t you.” “Yeah.” “Why?” I gave in. I couldn’t not. I reached over and put my hand on his knee. He tensed briefly but settled when I curled my fingers over his leg, just letting my hand rest there. I couldn’t look at him. I thought my face was on fire. He said, “That’s….” His voice broke. He cleared his throat. “After the hunters came, something shifted. Between us. I don’t know how or why exactly. You stopped being weird around me.” “Seems like I’ve picked that right up again.” He chuckled. “A little. It’s okay, though. It’s like… a beginning. You came to me one day. You were sweating. I remember thinking something bad had happened because you kept wringing your hands until I thought you were going to break your bones. I asked you what was wrong. And you know what you said? “Probably something stupid.” “You said that you didn’t think you could ever give up on me. That no matter how long it took, you would be there until I told you otherwise. That you weren’t going to push me for anything but you thought I should know that you had… intentions.” “Oh dear god,” I said in horror. “And that worked?” Kelly snorted, and I felt his hand on the back of mine. “Not quite. But what you said next did.” I looked over at him. “What did I say?” He was watching me with human eyes, and I thought I could love him. I saw how easy it could be. I didn’t, not yet, but oh, I wanted to. “You said you thought the world of me. That we’d been through so much and you couldn’t stand another day if I didn’t know that. You told me that you were a good wolf, a strong wolf, and if I’d only give you a chance, you’d make sure I’d never regret it.” I had to know. “Have you?” “No,” he whispered. “Not once. Not ever.” He looked away. “It was good between us. We took it slow. You smiled all the time. You brought me flowers once. Mom was pissed because you ripped them up from her flower bed and there were still roots and dirt hanging from the bottom, but you were so damn proud of yourself. You said it was romantic. And I believed you.” He plucked a blade of grass and held it in the palm of his hand. “There was something… I don’t know. Endless. About you and me.” He took my hand off his knee and turned it over. He set the blade of grass in my palm and closed his hand over mine. He looked toward the sky and the stars through the canopy of leaves. “We came here sometimes. Just the two of us. And you would pretend to know all the stars. You would make up stories that absolutely weren’t true, and I remember looking at you, thinking how wonderful it was to be by your side. And if we were lucky, there’d be—ah. Look. Again.” His voice was wet and soft, and it cracked me right down the middle. Fireflies rose around us, pulsing slowly. At first there were only two or three, but then more began to hang heavy in the air. They were yellow-green, and I wondered how this could be real. Here. Now. This moment. How I ever could have forgotten this. Forgotten him. It had to have been the strongest magic the world had ever known. That was the only way I’d have ever left his side. He reached out with his other hand, quick and light, and snatched a firefly out of the air. He was careful not to crush it. He leaned his head toward mine like he was about to tell me a great secret. Instead he opened his hand between us. The firefly lay near the bottom of his ring finger. Its shell was black with a stripe down the middle. It barely moved. “Just wait,” Kelly whispered. I did. It only took a moment. The firefly pulsed in his hand. “There it is,” he said. He pulled away and lifted his hand. The firefly took to its wings, lifting off and flying away. He stared after it. I only had eyes for him.

At one point, Tom came back with another tattoo hidden under the bracelet he’d worn since his and Prophet’s first mission together. A tattoo that was almost an exact replica of the bracelet. “So no one can take it off me again,” he’d said in response to Prophet’s unasked question. Because when Tom had been jailed in New Orleans, he’d been forced to take it off, and he’d then waited until Prophet could put it back on him. The superstitious voodoo bastard. But Prophet had to admit it made him smile when Tom wasn’t looking. And once he’d discovered it, he’d taken the time to trace it with his tongue and nip it with his teeth, marking Tom hard, wanting to give tangible proof to his feelings. When Tom found out about the other shit—his eyes, everything else he was hiding—he might run, but Prophet resigned himself to the fact that his heart could get ripped out. Again. And it would be worse this time. Way worse, because Prophet knew more, felt more, loved harder.

Do we have any plans for this evening?” he whispered in her ear. She nodded; the motion caused her hair to tickle his cheek. “A ball,” she said. “At Lady Mottram’s.” Anthony couldn’t resist the soft silkiness of her hair, and he threaded two fingers through it, letting it slide across his hand and wrap around his wrist. “Do you know what I think?” he murmured. He heard her smile as she asked, “What?” “I think I’ve never cared that much for Lady Mottram. And do you know what else I think?” Now he heard her trying not to giggle. “What?” “I think we should go upstairs.” “You do?” she asked, clearly feigning ignorance. “Oh, indeed. This very minute, as a matter of fact.” She wiggled her bottom, the minx, ascertaining for herself just how quickly he needed to go upstairs. “I see,” she murmured gravely. He pinched her hip lightly. “I rather thought you felt” “Well, that, too,” she admitted. “It was quite enlightening.” “I’m sure it was,” he muttered. Then, with a very wicked smile, he nudged her chin until they were nose to nose. “Do you know what else I think?” he said huskily. Her eyes widened. “I’m sure I can’t imagine.” “I think,” he said, one of his hands creeping under her dress and slithering up her leg, “that if we don’t go upstairs this instant, I might be content to remain right here.” “Here?” she squeaked. His hand found the edge of her stockings. “Here,” he affirmed. “Now?” His fingers tickled her soft thatch of hair, then sank into the very core of her womanhood. She was soft and wet and felt like heaven. “Oh, most definitely now,” he said. “Here?” He nibbled on her lips. “Didn’t I already answer that question?” And if she had any further questions, she didn’t voice them for the next hour. Or maybe it was just that he was trying his damnedest to rob her of speech. And if a man could judge from the little squeals and mewls that slipped from her mouth, he was doing a ripping good job. -Anthony & Kate

I waited for years for my infatuation to blow over, managing it like a chronic illness. But suppression only sustains and intensifies passion instead of letting it peter out into domesticity, the way the narrow glass canyons of Manhattan Venturi the winds to a pitch that rips umbrellas inside out. Kati Jo used to say she wished Lauren and I could just fuck so I'd get it out of my system, but I never wanted anything as feasible as an affair. I never imagined that Lauren might leave her husband, or entertained shameful little daydreams about his death. The only scenario I could plausibly picture that would bring us together was not Lars's death but my own. I would contract some painless terminal illness that would entitle me to ask Lauren to sit at my bedside in my last months and read to me or bring me little sandwiches. I couldn't envision any realistic way of changing this world; what I wanted was to live in a different one. I was never really a reformer, but a utopian.

Here's what an e-reader is. A battery operated slab, about a pound, one half-inch thick, perhaps an aluminum border, rubberized back, plastic, metal, silicon, a bit of gold, plus rare metals such as columbite-tantalite (Google it) ripped from the earth, often in war-torn Africa. To make one e-reader requires 33 pounds of minerals, plus 79 gallons of water to produce the battery and printed writing and refine the minerals. The production of other e-reading devices such as cell phones, iPads and whatever new gizmo will pop up (and down) in the years ahead is similar. "The adverse health impacts from making one e-reader are estimated to be 70 times greater than those for making a single book," says the Times. Then you figure that the one hundred million e-readers will be outmoded in short order--to be replaced by one hundred million new and improved devices in the years ahead that will likewise be replace by new models ad infinitum, and you realize an environmental disaster is at hand.

Cersei cupped the other woman’s breast. Softly at first, hardly touching, feeling the warmth of it beneath her palm, the skin as smooth as satin. She gave it a gentle squeeze, then ran her thumbnail lightly across the big dark nipple, back and forth and back and forth until she felt it stiffen. When she glanced up, Taena’s eyes were open. “Does that feel good?” she asked. “Yes,” said Lady Merryweather. “And this?” Cersei pinched the nipple now, puling on it hard, twisting it between her fingers. The Myrish woman gave a gasp of pain. “You’re hurting me.” “It’s just the wine. I had a flagon with my supper, and another with the widow Stokeworth. I had to drink to keep her calm.” She twisted Taena’s other nipple too, puling until the other woman gasped. “I am the queen. I mean to claim my rights.” “Do what you wil.” Taena’s hair was as black as Robert’s, even down between her legs, and when Cersei touched her there she found her hair al sopping wet, where Robert’s had been coarse and dry. “Please,” the Myrish woman said, “go on, my queen. Do as you wil with me. I’m yours.” But it was no good. She could not feel it, whatever Robert felt on the nights he took her. There was no pleasure in it, not for her. For Taena, yes. Her nipples were two black diamonds, her sex slick and steamy. Robert would have loved you, for an hour. The queen slid a finger into that Myrish swamp, then another, moving them in and out, but once he spent himself inside you, he would have been hard-pressed to recal your name. She wanted to see if it would be as easy with a woman as it had always been with Robert. Ten thousand of your children perished in my palm, Your Grace, she thought, slipping a third finger into Myr. Whilst you snored, I would lick your sons of my face and fingers one by one, al those pale sticky princes. You claimed your rights, my lord, but in the darkness I would eat your heirs. Taena gave a shudder. She gasped some words in a foreign tongue, then shuddered again and arched her back and screamed. She sounds as if she is being gored, the queen thought. For a moment she let herself imagine that her fingers were a bore’s tusks, ripping the Myrish woman apart from groin to throat. It was stil no good. It had never been any good with anyone but Jaime. When she tried to take her hand away, Taena caught it and kissed her fingers. “Sweet queen, how shal I pleasure you?” She slid her hand down Cersei’s side and touched her sex. “Tel me what you would have of me, my love.

Believe me, there is none fraught with such deep, such vital interest. If you talk, indeed, of the capricious inclination awakened by the mere charm of perishable beauty, I grant it to be idle in the extreme; but that love which springs from the concordant sympathies of virtuous hearts; that love which is awakened by the perception of moral excellence, and fed by meditation on intellectual as well as personal beauty; that is a passion which refines and ennobles the human heart. Oh, where is there a sight more nearly approaching to the intercourse of angels, than that of two young beings, free from the sins and follies of the world, mingling pure thoughts, and looks, and feelings, and becoming as it were soul of one soul and heart of one heart! How exquisite the silent converse that they hold; the soft devotion of the eye, that needs no words to make it eloquent! Yes, my friend, if there be anything in this weary world worthy of heaven, it is the pure bliss of such a mutual affection!

There are people in this world whose central focus is to permeate cruelty with little regard for their own karmic penalties. Love is such a powerful emotion and overriding sentiment that it is unfathomable that life's most potent muse has escaped the psyche of so many of our men. I can't understand why somebody would think it is okay to rip two hundred and thirty girls from their families. I wonder who condones this type of behavior. I often look at children and wonder what they will become, I stare at school boys, babies and even the bareback boys on the street and wonder if in a few years one of these children might take my life. With that thought I am forced to wonder what might have gone wrong in their lives, what values did their parents impress upon them that made them morph into the brutish adults they have become. I wonder if their parents know about their atrocious acts and if they understand that they might be responsible for creating these monsters who in my opinion should have never seen the light of life.

FURIOUS FAVOR I wonder if David would be allowed in our churches today. In most cases, when a church member has an affair, he is shunned at best or mistreated at worst—even if he repents. But David doesn’t just have an affair. He lusts, covets, fornicates, lies, and gets another man hammered. Then he tries to keep his dirty little secrets by murdering the husband of the woman he “loves.” I doubt I’ve met anyone as sinful as David. Have you? He breaks half of the Ten Commandments in a single episode. And he doesn’t repent until he’s caught. But when Nathan shoves his prophetic finger into David’s chest and rebukes him, David falls to his knees and admits his guilt. And right then, at that moment, God rips open the heavens to reach down and touch David’s soul with stubborn delight. God eagerly forgives David for his sin, and all of it is buried at the bottom of the sea, never to be remembered again. There is no hiccup in God’s furious favor toward David. So why do repentant sinners still bear the stigma of “adulterer,” “divorced,” or “addict” in our churches today? It’s one thing if they don’t repent. But quite often we shun repentant sinners, like Jeffrey Dahmer, whose crimes we just can’t forget. “He’s the former addict.” “That’s the divorced mom.” “Here comes the guy who slept with the church secretary.” For some reason we love to define people by the sin in their lives—even past sin in their lives—rather than by the grace that forgave it. It’s no wonder that David pens the last sentence in Psalm 23: “Surely goodness and mercy shall [hunt me down] all the days of my life” (Ps. 23:6).

I had done everything- everything for that love. I had ripped myself to shreds, I had killed innocents and debased myself, and he had sat beside Amarantha on that throne. And he couldn't do anything, hadn't risked it- hadn't risked being caught until there was one night left, and all he'd wanted to do wasn't free me, but fuck me, and- ... And when Amarantha had broken me, when she had snapped my bones and made my blood boil in its veins, he'd just knelt and begged her. He hadn't tried to kill her, hadn't crawled for me. Yes, he'd fought for me- but I'd fought harder for him. ... And he had the nerve once his powers were back to shove me into a cage. The nerve to say I was no longer useful; I was to be cloistered for his peace of mind. He'd given me everything I'd needed to become myself, to feel safe, and when he got what he wanted- when he got his power back, his lands back... he stopped trying. He was still good, still Tamlin, but he was just... wrong. And then I was sobbing through my clenched teeth, the tears washing away that infected wound, and I didn't care that Cassian was there, or Rhys or Azriel.

Why--?" he jerked his thumb in the direction of the young, "when they're so lovely--" She too looked at the girl, who was fastening a flower that had come undone in the front of her frock. She smiled. She said nothing. Then half consciously she echoed his question without a meaning in her echo, "Why?" He was dashed for a moment. It seemed to him that she refused to help him. And he wanted her to help him. Why should she not take the weight off his shoulders and give him what he longed for --assurance, certainty? Because she too was deformed like the rest of them? He looked down at her hands. They were strong hands; fine hands; but if it were a question, he thought, watching the fingers curl slightly, of "my" children, of "my" possession, it would be one rip down the belly; or teeth in the soft fur of the throat. We cannot help each other, he thought, we are all deformed. Yet, disagreeable as it was to him to remove her from the eminence upon which he placed her, perhaps she was right, he thought, and we who make idols of other people, who endow this man, that woman, with power to lead us, only add to the deformity, and stoop ourselves.

I walked back into the bedroom. Amar was standing by the foot of the bed, playing lazily with the cuffs of his sleeves. I tensed. That foolish disappointment was gone. “Are you frightened?” he asked. Don’t cower. I straightened my back. I would’ve stared him in the eyes if I could. “Should I be?” “I should hope there are more frightening things than sharing a bed with me,” he said. He flourished a bow. “Did I not promise you that we would be equals? Your will is where I lay my head. I will not touch you without your permission.” I moved to the bed, taking stock of the unnecessary amount of cushions. I could feel Amar’s gaze on me and rather than tossing the cushions to the ground, I stacked them in the middle of the bed. Amar followed me and slid onto the opposite side. The fire in the diyas collapsed with the faintest of sighs. “A daunting fortress,” he said lazily, prodding one of the pillows. “Have you so little faith in me?” “Yes.” He laughed and the sound was unexpectedly…musical. “The dark is a lovely thing, is it not? It lets us speak in blindness. No scowls or smiles or stares clouding our words.” I lay in bed, my body taut. Amar continued: “I spoke no falsehoods in the Night Bazaar,” he said. “I would rip the stars from the sky if you wished it. Anything for you. But remember to trust me. Remember your promise.” I fell quiet for a moment. “I remember my promise.” After that, I said nothing. The air between us could have been whittled in steel. An hour passed before I ventured a glance at Amar. His face was turned from me, leaving only dark curls half visible in the light. Moonlight had limned his silhouette silver. The longer I stared at him, the more something sharp stirred within me and I was reminded of that strange ache in my head, where forgotten dreams jostled for remembrance.

The other night I had dinner with a good friend, a woman writer whom I’ve known for about ten years. Though we’ve never had a romantic relationship, I love her dearly and care about her: she’s a good person, and a talented writer, and those two qualities put her everlastingly on my list of When You Need Help, Even In The Dead Of Night, I’m On Call. Over dinner, we talked about an anguish she has been experiencing for a number of years. She’s afraid of dying alone and unloved. Some of you are nodding in understanding. A few of you are smiling. The former understand pain, the latter are assholes. Or very lucky. We’ve all dreaded that moment when we pack it in, get a fast rollback of days and nights, and realize we’re about to go down the hole never having belonged to anyone. If you’ve never felt it, you’re either an alien from far Arcturus or so insensitive your demise won’t matter. Or very lucky. Her problem is best summed up by something Theodore Sturgeon once said: “There’s no absence of love in the world, only worthy places to put it.” My friend gets involved with guys who do her in. Not all her fault. Some of it is—we’re never wholly victims, we help construct the tiger traps filled with spikes—but not all of it. She’s vulnerable. While not naïve, she is innocent. And that’s a dangerous, but laudable capacity: to wander through a world that can be very uncaring and amorally cruel, and still be astonished at the way the sunlight catches the edge of a coleus leaf. Anybody puts her down for that has to go through me first. So she keeps trying, and the ones with long teeth sense her vulnerability and they move in for the slow kill. (That’s evil: only the human predator destroys slowly, any decent hunting animal rips out the throat and feeds, and that’s that. The more I see of people, the better I like animals.)

What if she doesn’t worry about her body and eats enough for all the growing she has to do? She might rip her stockings and slam-dance on a forged ID to the Pogues, and walk home barefoot, holding her shoes, alone at dawn; she might baby-sit in a battered-women’s shelter one night a month; she might skateboard down Lombard Street with its seven hairpin turns, or fall in love with her best friend and do something about it, or lose herself for hours gazing into test tubes with her hair a mess, or climb a promontory with the girls and get drunk at the top, or sit down when the Pledge of Allegiance says stand, or hop a freight train, or take lovers without telling her last name, or run away to sea. She might revel in all the freedoms that seem so trivial to those who could take them for granted; she might dream seriously the dreams that seem so obvious to those who grew up with them really available. Who knows what she would do? Who knows what it would feel like? But if she is not careful she will end up: raped, pregnant, impossible to control, or merely what is now called fat. The teenage girl knows this. Everyone is telling her to be careful. She learns that making her body into her landscape to tame is preferable to any kind of wildness

But our Edenic tent–God doesn’t just want to save us. He actually wants to be with us. He doesn’t just love us. God actually likes us. So God removes His royal robes and steps down from His throne to experience—for the first time—what it is like to be human. God is omniscient, which means that He is all-knowing. There’s nothing in the universe, no piece of information, no fact, no statistic that He doesn’t know. The hairs on your head, the zits on your face—He knows about every one. But until the incarnation, God hadn’t experienced human nature. Since zits aren’t a sin, perhaps Jesus had them too. God knows every hair on your head, but through the incarnation, God knows what it feels like to have hair ripped out. God knows about tiredness, but through the incarnation, He experiences exhaustion. God knows how many molecules it takes to shoot a hunger pain from your stomach to your brain. But through the incarnation, God knows what it feels like to starve to the point of death. Through the incarnation, God has enjoyed the same warm wave of sunlight that splashes across your face on the first day of spring. When you bathe in it, God smiles because He’s bathed in it too. He’s been refreshed by a night’s sleep after a long day of work. Warmed by a toasty bed on a cold winter night. Enjoyed a rich glass of wine while celebrating among friends. God authored creation. But through the incarnation, God experienced creation. And He encountered joy under the bridge. He also experienced pain. Relational, psychological, emotional, and physical agony. God has suffered the misery and brokenness of the same sin-saturated world that oppresses us every day. The pain of being rejected, beaten, abused, unloved, uncared for, mocked, shamed, spat upon, and disrespected as an image bearer of the Creator. Jesus knows all of this. He’s experienced all of this. And He willingly endured it to bring you back to Eden.

We used to talk about death, she said. We don’t anymore. Why is that? I don’t know. It’s because it’s here. There’s nothing left to talk about. I wouldn’t leave you. I don’t care, it’s meaningless. You can think of me as a faithless slut if you like. I’ve taken a new lover. He can give me what you cannot. Death is not a lover. Oh yes he is. Please don’t do this. I’m sorry. I can’t do this alone. Then don’t. I can’t help you. They say women dream of danger to those in their care and men of danger to themselves. But I don’t dream at all. You say you can’t? Then don’t do it. That’s all. Because I am done with my own whorish heart and I have been for a long time. You talk about taking a stand but there is no stand to take. My heart was ripped out of me the night he was born so don’t ask for sorrow now. There is none. Maybe you’ll be good at this. I doubt it, but who knows. The one thing I can tell you is that you won’t survive for yourself. I know because I would never have come this far. A person who had no one would be well advised to cobble together some passable ghost. Breathe it into being and coax it along with words of love. Offer it each phantom crumb and shield it from harm with your body. As for me my only hope is for eternal nothingness and I hope it with all my heart.

The military authorities were concerned that soldiers going home on leave would demoralize the home population with horror stories of the Ostfront. ‘You are under military law,’ ran the forceful reminder, ‘and you are still subject to punishment. Don’t speak about weapons, tactics or losses. Don’t speak about bad rations or injustice. The intelligence service of the enemy is ready to exploit it.’ One soldier, or more likely a group, produced their own version of instructions, entitled ‘Notes for Those Going on Leave.’ Their attempt to be funny reveals a great deal about the brutalizing affects of the Ostfront. ‘You must remember that you are entering a National Socialist country whose living conditions are very different to those to which you have been accustomed. You must be tactful with the inhabitants, adapting to their customs and refrain from the habits which you have come to love so much. Food: Do not rip up the parquet or other kinds of floor, because potatoes are kept in a different place. Curfew: If you forget your key, try to open the door with the round-shaped object. Only in cases of extreme urgency use a grenade. Defense Against Partisans: It is not necessary to ask civilians the password and open fire upon receiving an unsatisfactory answer. Defense Against Animals: Dogs with mines attached to them are a special feature of the Soviet Union. German dogs in the worst cases bite, but they do not explode. Shooting every dog you see, although recommended in the Soviet Union, might create a bad impression. Relations with the Civil Population: In Germany just because someone is wearing women’s clothes does not necessarily mean that she is a partisan. But in spite of this, they are dangerous for anyone on leave from the front. General: When on leave back to the Fatherland take care not to talk about the paradise existence in the Soviet Union in case everybody wants to come here and spoil our idyllic comfort.

Sun Dance makes me strong. Sun Dance takes place inside of me, not outside of me. I pierce the flesh of my being. I offer my flesh to the Great Spirit, the Great Mystery, Wakan Tanka. To give your flesh to Spirit is to give your life. And what you have given you can no longer lose. Sun Dance is our religion, our strength. We take great pride in that strength, which enables us to resist pain, torture, any trial rather than betray the People. That's why, in the past, when the enemy tortured us with knives, bullwhips, even fire, we were able to withstand the pain. That strength still exists among us. When you give your flesh, when you're pierced in Sun Dance, you feel every bit of that pain, every iota. Not one jot is spared you. And yet there is a separation, a detachment, a greater mind that you become part of, so that you both feel the pain and see yourself feeling the pain. And then, somehow, the pain becomes contained, limited. As the white-hot sun pours molten through your eyes into your inner being, as the skewers implanted in your chest pull and yank and rip at your screaming flesh, a strange and powerful lucidity gradually expands within your mind. The pain explodes into a bright white light, into revelation. You are given a wordless vision of what it is to be in touch with all Being and all beings. And for the rest of your life, once you have made that sacrifice of your flesh to the Great Mystery, you will never forget that greater reality of which we are each an intimate and essential part and which holds each of us in an embrace as loving as mother's arms. Every time a pin pricks your finger from then on, that little pain will be but a tiny reminder of that larger pain and of the still greater reality that exists within each of us, an infinite realm beyond reach of all pain. There even the most pitiable prisoner can find solace. So Sun Dance made even prison life sustainable for me. I am undestroyed. My life is my Sun Dance.

-did you just ask something?" "I asked if you can undress any faster." Evie huffed with a mixture of amusement and exasperation. "No, I can't. There are too many b-buttons, and they're very small." "What a pity. Because in thirty seconds, I'm going to rip away whatever clothing you have left." Evie knew full well not to take the threat lightly- he'd done it before, on more than one occasion. "Sebastian, no. I like this dress." Her husband's eyes glinted with devilish humor as he watched her increasingly frantic efforts. "No dress is as beautiful as your naked skin. All those sweet freckles scattered over you, like a thousand tiny angel kisses... you have twenty seconds left, by the way." "You don't even h-have a clock," she complained. "I'm counting by heartbeats. You'd better hurry, love." Evie glanced anxiously down at the row of pearl buttons, which seem to have multiplied. With a defeated sigh, she dropped her arms to her sides. "Just go on and rip it off," she mumbled. She heard his silky laugh, and a sluice of water. He stood with streams runneling over the sleek, muscled contours of his body, and Evie gasped as she was pulled into a steaming embrace. His amused voice curled inside the sensitive shell of her ear. "My poor little put-upon wife. Let me help you. I have a way with buttons...

I Won’t Write Your Obituary You asked if you could call to say goodbye if you were ever really gonna kill yourself. Sure, but I won’t write your obituary. I’ll commission it from some dead-end journalist who will say things like: “At peace… Better place… Fought the good fight…” Maybe reference the loving embrace of Capital-G-God at least 4 times. Maybe quote Charles fucking Bukowski. And I won’t stop them because I won’t write your obituary. But if you call me, I will write you a new sky, one you can taste. I will write you a D-I-Y cloud maker so on days when you can’t do anything you can still make clouds in whatever shape you want them. I will write you letters, messages in bottles, in cages, in orange peels, in the distance between here and the moon, in forests and rivers and bird songs. I will write you songs. I can’t write music, but I’ll find Rihanna, and I’ll get her to write you music if it will make you want to dance a little longer. I will write you a body whose veins are electricity because outlets are easier to find than good shrinks, but we will find you a good shrink. I will write you 1-800-273-8255, that’s the suicide hotline; we can call it together. And yeah, you can call me, but I won’t tell you it’s okay, that I forgive you. I won’t say “goodbye” or “I love you” one last time. You won’t leave on good terms with me, Because I will not forgive you. I won’t read you your last rights, absolve you of sin, watch you sail away on a flaming viking ship, my hand glued to my forehead. I will not hold your hand steady around a gun. And after, I won’t come by to pick up the package of body parts you will have left specifically for me. I’ll get a call like “Ma’am, what would you have us do with them?” And I’ll say, “Burn them. Feed them to stray cats. Throw them at school children. Hurl them at the sea. I don’t care. I don’t want them.” I don’t want your heart. It’s not yours anymore, it’s just a heart now and I already have one. I don’t want your lungs, just deflated birthday party balloons that can’t breathe anymore. I don’t want a jar of your teeth as a memento. I don’t want your ripped off skin, a blanket to wrap myself in when I need to feel like your still here. You won’t be there. There’s no blood there, there’s no life there, there’s no you there. I want you. And I will write you so many fucking dead friend poems, that people will confuse my tongue with your tombstone and try to plant daisies in my throat before I ever write you an obituary while you’re still fucking here. So the answer to your question is “yes”. If you’re ever really gonna kill yourself, yes, please, call me.

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

After a time he found and opened a book he had been reading that he had expected to end well, a romance which he wanted to end well, with the hero and heroine finding love, with peace and joy and redemption and understanding. Love is two bodies with one soul, he read, and turned the page. But there was nothing - the final page had been ripped away and used as toilet paper or smoked, and there was no hope or joy or understanding. There was no last page. The book of his life just broke off. There was only the mud below him and the filthy sky above. There was to be no peace and no hope. And Dorrigo Evans understood that the love story would go on forever and ever, world without end.

up for it, and I’m sorry. That’s not enough. You’re going to search until you find something, and you’re going to tell me. Right now. Sheri. Please. You do it now or we’re gone. You give me some way to have some sympathy for you as I stand in this nice house, all lovingly redone, and think about the broken house you left us in, with its leaky roof and no heat and no insulation and nothing. Tell your sob story about the fucking war, whatever it was that my mom thought you were so broken about. My grandfather closed his eyes. No story ever explains. But I’ll give you what you want. I think I know the moment you want, because I made a kind of decision. There was some change. But I can’t start the story at the beginning. I’ve never been able to do that. I have to start at the end and then go back, and it doesn’t finish, because you can go back forever. Do it, my mother said. I don’t think Caitlin should hear. She can hear. Okay. You’re her mother. That’s right. So I won’t give the awful details, but I was lying in a pile of bodies. My friends. The closest friends I’ve ever had. Not piled there on purpose, but just the way it ended up because I had been working on the axle, lying on the ground. And the thing is, the war was over. It had been over for days, and we were laughing and a bit drunk, telling jokes. There was something unbearable about the fact that we’d all be going our separate ways now. The truth is that we didn’t want to leave. We wanted the war over, but we didn’t want what we had together to be over. I think we all had some sense that this was the closest we’d ever be to anyone, and that our families might feel like strangers now. So that’s it? You couldn’t be a father and husband because you weren’t done being a buddy? No. No. It’s the way it happened, in a moment that was supposed to be safe. After every moment of every day in fear for years, we were finally safe, and that’s when the slugs came and I watched my friends torn apart and landing on me, dying. That’s the point. We were supposed to be safe. And with your mother, too, I was supposed to be safe. A wife, a family. The story doesn’t make any sense unless you know every moment before it, every time we thought we were going to die, all the times we weren’t safe. You can’t just be told about that. You have to feel it, how long one night can be, and then all of them put together, hundreds of nights and then more, and there’s a kind of deal that’s made, a deal with god. You do certain terrible things, you endure things, because there’s a bargain made. And then when god says the deal’s off later, after you’ve already paid, and you see your friends ripped through, yanked like puppets on a day that was safe, and you find out your wife is going to die young, and you get to watch her dying, something that again is going to be for years, hundreds of nights more, all deals are off.

I reach out and squeeze her hand, and remember everything we’ve lived through together. The normal things we endured as we grew from girls to women. The days in school where boys would line us up in order of our fuckability. The parties where it was normal to lie on top of a semi-conscious girl, do things to her, then call her a slut afterwards. A Christmas number-one song about a pregnant woman being stuffed into the boot of a car and driven off a bridge. Laughing when your male friends made rape jokes. Opening a newspaper and seeing the breasts of a girl who had only just turned legal, dressed in school uniform to make her look underage. Of the childhood films we grew up on, and loved, and knew all the words to, where, at the end, a girl would always get chosen for looking the prettiest compared to all the others. Reading magazines that told you to mirror men’s body language, and hum on their dick when you went down on them, that turned into books about how to get them to commit by not being yourself. Of size zero, and Atkins, and Five-Two, and cabbage soup, and juice cleanses and eat clean. Of pole-dancing lessons as a great way to get fit, and actually, if you want to be really cool, come to the actual strip club too. Of being sexually assaulted when you kissed someone on a dance floor and not thinking about it properly until you are twenty-seven and read a book about how maybe it was wrong. Of being jealous of your friend who got assaulted on the dance floor because why didn’t he pick you to assault? Boys not wanting to be with you unless you fuck them quickly. Boys not wanting to be with you because you fucked them too quickly. Being terrified to walk anywhere in the dark in case the worst thing happens to you, and so your male friend walks you home to keep you safe, and then comes into your bedroom and does the worst thing to you, and now, when you look him up online, he’s engaged to a woman who wears a feminist T-shirt and isn’t going to change her name when they get married. Of learning to have no pubic hair, and how liberating it is to pay thirty-five pounds a month to rip this from your body and lurch up in agony. Rings around famous women’s bodies saying ‘look at this cellulite’, oh, by the way, here is a twenty-quid cream so you don’t get

Again, again, again. We both knew “fine” was a lie. I had done everything—everything for that love. I had ripped myself to shreds, I had killed innocents and debased myself, and he had sat beside Amarantha on that throne. And he couldn’t do anything, hadn’t risked it—hadn’t risked being caught until there was one night left, and all he’d wanted to do wasn’t free me, but fuck me, and— Again, again, again. One-two; one-two; one-two— And when Amarantha had broken me, when she had snapped my bones and made my blood boil in its veins, he’d just knelt and begged her. He hadn’t tried to kill her, hadn’t crawled for me. Yes, he’d fought for me—but I’d fought harder for him. Again, again, again, each pound of my fists on the sparring pads a question and an answer.

Maybe we should do some more homework.” Homework had been their code word for making out before they’d realized that they hadn’t been fooling anyone. But Jay was true to his word, especially his code word, and his lips settled over hers. Violet suddenly forgot that she was pretending to break free from his grip. Her frail resolve crumbled. She reached out, wrapping her arms around his neck, and pulled him closer to her. Jay growled from deep in his throat. “Okay, homework it is.” He pulled her against him, until they were lying face-to-face, stretched across the length of the couch. It wasn’t long before she was restless, her hands moving impatiently, exploring him. She shuddered when she felt his fingers slip beneath her shirt and brush over her bare skin. He stroked her belly and higher, the skin of his hands rough against her soft flesh. His thumb brushed the base of her rib cage, making her breath catch. And then, like so many times before, he stopped, abruptly drawing back. He shifted only inches, but those inches felt like miles, and Violet felt the familiar surge of frustration. He didn’t say a word; he didn’t have to. Violet understood perfectly. They’d gone too far. Again. But Violet was frustrated, and it was getting harder and harder to ignore her disappointment. She knew they couldn’t play this unsatisfying game forever. “So you’re going to Seattle tomorrow?” He used the question to fill the rift between them, but his voice shook and Violet was glad he wasn’t totally unaffected. She wasn’t as quick to pretend that everything was okay, especially when what she really wanted to do was to rip his shirt off and unbutton his jeans. But they’d talked about this. And, time and time again, they’d decided that they needed to be sure. One hundred percent. Because once they crossed that line… She and Jay had been best friends since the first grade, and up until last fall that’s all they’d ever been. Now that she was in love with him, she couldn’t imagine losing him because they made the wrong decision. Or made it too soon. She decided to let Jay have his small talk. For now. “Yeah, Chelsea wants to go down to the waterfront and maybe do some shopping. It’s easier to be around her when it’s just the two of us. You know, when she’s not always…on.” “You mean when she’s not picking on someone?” “Exactly.

Never again will I allow pride (Leviathan) to control my life (Job 41). Never again will I allow my heart to become hardened (Job 41:24). Never again will I allow the Holy Spirit’s power to not flow in my life. The scales of Leviathan have been ripped from my life (Job 41:15). Never again will I allow stubbornness to control my life, for stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry, and I am not stiff-necked (1 Sam. 15:23). Never again will I walk in vanity and vain glory (Gal. 5:26, KJV). Never again will I walk in selfish ambition (James 3:14). Never again will I speak in a boastful way (James 4:16). Never again will I cause another person to stumble (Mal. 2:8). Never again will I walk in offense (Ps. 119:165, KJV). Never again will I give myself to drunkenness (Eph. 5:18).

Stop.” He shot in front of me, moving so fast I didn’t see him until we were face to face. “Please just . . . I . . . I don’t know what to say, Josie.” I winced, feeling what he was saying all the way to the core. “That . . . that says everything, Seth, because if you don’t—” My voice cracked, right along with what was left of my heart. “If you don’t know what to say, then that’s it.” “You don’t understand.” His voice was low.“I don’t understand anything.” Heart aching, I stepped to the side, but Seth followed. “Please, just let me go. We can forget we even had—” He clasped my cheeks in a gentle grasp. “No one has ever told me that before.” “What?” I whispered after a moment. His eyes were wide, slightly dilated. “No one has ever said they loved me or were in love with me, and actually meant it.” I couldn’t believe that. Not even his mother? Yes, that was a different kind of love, but then I remembered how his mom was and once again I found myself wishing she was alive so I could bitch-slap her into eternity. But to live the years he had, and to never experience any kind of love wasn’t just wrong, it was sad. I wished it wasn’t so. Seth’s hands slid down my neck, stopping where his thumbs pressed against my pulse. “But you . . .” I had a choice here. I recognized that. I could save face and let this go. I could pull away and walk out of this room, but I was hurting for myself and despite everything that had gone on between us, I was still hurting for him. Maybe that. “But I love you.” Seth’s hands shook—his hands. Hands that were always so steady in battle, but they trembled now, touching me. “I don’t deserve that from anyone, but especially from you.” Voice rough and heavy, he searched my face intently. “That is a precious gift that I . . . that I am not worthy of.” I sucked in air. Oh gosh, that hurt. Hearing him say that tore me up, ripped me right apart, and it struck me then. I knew why he had backed off. Him pushing me away had nothing to do with Alex or with me. It was because of him, because of how he believed he deserved nothing more than punishment. That he sincerely believed that the only thing he had was to atone for his past sins. Tears pricked my eyes as I folded my hands over his wrists. I had to prove what he believed wasn’t true. Prove that he was the total of everything he’d done and not just the dark things he was ashamed of, and I would do so, because I loved him and accepted him for who he was, for all his faults. That was what love meant.

So much strain and muscular labor involved in absorbing food. I’m exhausted just watching it. But above all there is speech, incessant speaking, where the inflated edges of the tube are stretched and contracted, knotted and unknotted, ripped open or pressed shut, flued and drummed, hammered and gnawed. Licked. That tube has two ends. To the far end goes all ignominy, and to the fore end all the glory, hymns of praise. Her lips were lovely. The swollen ring at one end of the tube, fastened to rings and riggings of muscle. All these sounds. It’s exhausting. I notice the upper jaw doesn’t move at all, only the lower. You see the skull so clearly I wonder people don’t think of death whenever they witness speech, or speak themselves, feeling that hinge flap up and down, and even back and forth a bit—how can it go back and forth? Is the socket that loose, or is it something else, like a leather hinge, like a book binding?

I prop my guitar up against the nightstand. Then I turn toward the bed and fall into it face first. The mattress is soft but firm, like a sheet of steel wrapped in a cloud. I roll around, moaning loud and long. “Oh, that’s good. Really, really good. What a grand bed!” Sarah clears her throat. “Well. We should probably get to sleep, then. Big day tomorrow.” The pillow smells sweet, like candy. I can only imagine it’s from her. I wonder if I pressed my nose to the crook of her neck, would her skin smell as delicious? I brush away the thought as I watch her stiffly gather a pillow and blanket from the other side of the bed, dragging them to . . . the nook. “What are you doing?” She looks up, her doe eyes widening. “Getting ready for bed.” “You’re going to sleep there?” “Of course. The sofa’s very uncomfortable.” “Why can’t we share the bed?” She chokes . . . stutters. “I . . . I can’t sleep with you. I don’t even know you.” I throw my arms out wide. “What do you want to know? Ask me anything—I’m an open book.” “That’s not what I mean.” “You’re being ridiculous! It’s a huge bed. You could let one rip and I wouldn’t hear it.” And the blush is back. With a vengeance. “I’m not . . . I don’t . . .” “You don’t fart?” I scoff. “Really? Are you not human?” She curses under her breath, but I’d love to hear it out loud. I bet uninhibited Sarah Von Titebottum would be a stunning sight. And very entertaining. She shakes her head, pinning me with her eyes. “There’s something wrong with you.” “No.” I explain calmly, “I’m just free. Honest with myself and others. You should try it sometime.” She folds her arms, all tight, trembling indignation. It’s adorable. “I’m sleeping in the nook, Your Highness. And that’s that.” I sit up, pinning her gaze right back at her. “Henry.” “What?” “My name is not Highness, it’s fucking Henry, and I’d prefer you use it.” And she snaps. “Fine! Fucking Henry—happy?” I smile. “Yes. Yes, I am.” I flop back on the magnificent bed. “Sleep tight, Titebottum.” I think she growls at me, but it’s muffled by the sound of rustling bed linens and pillows. And then . . . there’s silence. Beautiful, blessed silence. I wiggle around, getting comfy. I turn on my side and fluff the pillow. I squeeze my eyes tight . . . but it’s hopeless. “Fucking hell!” I sit up. And Sarah springs to her feet. “What? What’s wrong?” It’s the guilt. I’ve barged into this poor girl’s room, confiscated her bed, and have forced her to sleep in a cranny in the wall. I may not be the man my father was or the gentleman my brother is, but I’m not that much of a prick. I stand up, rip my shirt over my head. and march toward the window seat. I feel Sarah’s eyes graze my bare chest, arms. and stomach, but she circles around me, keeping her distance. “You take the bloody bed,” I tell her. “I’ll sleep in the bloody nook.” “You don’t have to do that.” I push my hand through my hair. “Yes, I do.” Then I stand up straight and proper, an impersonation of Hugh Grant in one of his classic royal roles. “Please, Lady Sarah.” She blinks, her little mouth pursed. “Okay.” Then she climbs onto the bed, under the covers. And I squeeze onto the window bench, knees bent, my elbow jammed against the icy windowpane, and my neck bent at an odd angle that I’m going to be feeling tomorrow. The light is turned down to a very low dim, and for several moments all I hear is Sarah’s soft breaths. But then, in the near darkness, her delicate voice floats out on a sigh. “All right, we can sleep in the bed together.” Music to my ears. I don’t make her tell me twice—I’ve fulfilled my noble quota for the evening. I stumble from the nook and crash onto the bed. That’s better.

Two seconds went by before I got a response. Lenny: The offer stands, bish. Lenny: You’re the best person I know, fyi. I smiled down at my phone. Me: I love you too Lenny: [eye rolling emoji] Lenny: I was texting you because Grandpa G is making margaritas and he was asking where you were. Me: Tell him I love him. Lenny: I will. You find Rip? Me: I’m watching him. Lenny: Stalker Me: He’s standing in front of me, I can’t help it. Lenny: Pretty sure that’s what every stalker thinks. I chanced another glance at the man and held back a sigh. Me: Sometimes I don’t understand why him. Lenny: Because he looks like he’s been in jail and that’s about as far away from what every jackass you’ve ever dated looks like? Lenny: Grandpa G says he loves you too and to come over and bring the girl with you if she’s around. I didn’t tell him you’re at the bar, otherwise he’d want to invite himself. You know how that man gets in public. I almost laughed at the first comment and definitely laughed at the second one. Rip did look like he’d done time. That was unfair, but it was the truth. For all I knew, he probably had. Then again, I was probably judging him by a face he had no say in. For all I knew, he had a marshmallow heart and rescued and rehabilitated small animals when he wasn’t at work. Deep down, he might have a caring and loving disposition that he only shared around very few people—people who had won his trust. You never knew. The idea of that put a small smile on my face and kept it there as I typed a message back, leaving the first comment alone. Me: I don’t know how much longer I’ll be here, but if I leave soon, I’ll drop by. Tell Grandpa G that the girl is working tonight. You’re all coming for the graduation, right? Lenny: Yes. I’m legit ready to cry this Saturday. Lenny: I’ve got the blow horn ready by the way. TOOT TOOT, bish. She wasn’t the only one preparing herself to cry this weekend, and that made me happy for some reason.

So we do go out to the San Jose highway to watch Cody recap tires—There he is wearing goggles working like Vulcan at his forge, throwing tires all over the place with fantastic strength, the good ones high up on a pile, “This one’s no good” down on another, bing, bang, talking all the time a long fantastic lecture on tire recapping which has Dave Wain marvel with amazement—(“My God he can do all that and even explain while he’s doing it”)—But I just mention in connection with the fact that Dave Wain now realizes why I’ve always loved Cody—Expecting to see a bitter ex con he sees instead a martyr of the American Night in goggles in some dreary tire shop at 2 A.M. making fellows laugh with joy with his funny explanations yet at the same time to a T performing every bit of the work he’s being paid for—Rushing up and ripping tires off car wheels with a jicklo, clang, throwing it on the machine, starting up big roaring steams but yelling explanations over that, darting, bending, flinging, flaying, till Dave Wain said he thought he was going to die laughing or crying right there on the spot.

Will you never forgive me for what I did so long ago, Jane?” The soft question caught her off guard. “Would you do it again if you had the chance?” She could hardly breathe, awaiting his answer. With a low oath, he glanced away. Then his features hardened into those of the rigid and arrogant Dom he had become. “Yes. I did the only thing I could to keep you happy.” Her breath turned to ice in her throat. “That’s the problem. You still really believe that.” His gaze swung to her again, but before he could say anything more, noises in the hall arrested them both. “It’s gone very quiet in there.” It was the duke’s voice, remarkably clear, sounding as if it came from right outside the door. “Perhaps we should knock first.” Oh no! As Jane frantically set her gown to rights, she heard Lisette say, “Don’t you dare bother them, Max. I’m sure everything’s fine. Let’s come back later.” With panic growing in her belly, Jane glanced around for her tucker. Wordlessly, Dom plucked it from the back of a chair and handed it to her. Without meeting his gaze, she pinned it into her bodice, hoping to hide the tiny holes where Dom had unwittingly ripped it free of its pins. “Besides,” drawled Tristan, “it’s not as if Dom will seduce her or anything. That’s not his vice.” Sweet Lord, were they all right outside the door? “I’m not worried about that,” Max answered. “Miss Vernon isn’t the sort to let him seduce her.” As Jane tensed, Dom hissed under his breath, “Do the blasted idiots not realize we can hear them?” “Apparently not.” Dom furtively adjusted his trousers, which seemed to be rather…oddly protruding just now. Ohhh. Right. This was one time she wished Nancy hadn’t been so forthcoming about what happened to a man’s body when he was aroused. So that, not his pistol, had been the odd bulge digging into her. Definitely not a pistol. Her cheeks positively flamed. Faith, how could she even face his family after this and not give away what she and Dom had been doing? Mortified, she hurried to the looking glass to fix her hair. While she stuffed tendrils back into place and repinned drooping curls, Dom came up behind her to meet her gaze in the mirror. “Before we let them in, I want an answer to my question about Blakeborough.” Curse the stubborn man. How could she tell Dom she was so pathetic that she hadn’t even managed to find another man to love in all the years they’d spent apart? That she’d been foolish enough to wait around for Dom all this time, when he’d happily gone on living his life without her? Her pride couldn’t endure having him know that. To her relief, Tristan said, “Well, whatever they’re up to, we have to get moving.” A knock sounded at the door. “Dom? Jane? Are you done talking?” She met Dom’s gaze with a certain defiance, and he arched one eyebrow in question. So she took matters into her own hands and strode for the door. Caught off guard, Dom swore behind her and snatched up his greatcoat just as she opened the door and said, “Please come in. We’re quite finished.” In more ways than one. Their companions trooped in, casting her and Dom wary glances. Jane looked over to see Dom holding his greatcoat looped over his arm as if to shield the front of him. That brought the blushes back to her cheeks. She caught Lisette furtively watching her, and she cursed herself for wearing her emotions on her sleeve. Better shift her attention elsewhere before Lisette guessed just how shameless she’d been.

Alice's Cutie Code TM Version 2.1 - Colour Expansion Pack (aka Because this stuff won’t stop being confusing and my friends are mean edition) From Red to Green, with all the colours in between (wait, okay, that rhymes, but green to red makes more sense. Dang.) From Green to Red, with all the colours in between Friend Sampling Group: Fennie, Casey, Logan, Aisha and Jocelyn Green  Friends’ Reaction: Induces a minimum amount of warm and fuzzies. If you don’t say “aw”, you’re “dead inside”  My Reaction: Sort of agree with friends minus the “dead inside” but because that’s a really awful thing to say. Puppies are a good example. So is Walter Bishop. Green-Yellow  Friends’ Reaction: A noticeable step up from Green warm and fuzzies. Transitioning from cute to slightly attractive. Acceptable crush material. “Kissing.”  My Reaction: A good dance song. Inspirational nature photos. Stuff that makes me laugh. Pairing: Madison and Allen from splash Yellow  Friends’ Reaction: Something that makes you super happy but you don’t know why. “Really pretty, but not too pretty.” Acceptable dating material. People you’d want to “bang on sight.”  My Reaction: Love songs for sure! Cookies for some reason or a really good meal. Makes me feel like it’s possible to hold sunshine, I think. Character: Maxon from the selection series. Music: Carly Rae Jepsen Yellow-Orange  Friends’ Reaction: (When asked for non-sexual examples, no one had an answer. From an objective perspective, *pushes up glasses* this is the breaking point. Answers definitely skew toward romantic or sexual after this.)  My Reaction: Something that really gets me in my feels. Also art – oil paintings of landscapes in particular. (What is with me and scenery? Maybe I should take an art class) Character: Dean Winchester. Model: Liu Wren. Orange  Friends’ Reaction: “So pretty it makes you jealous. Or gay.”  “Definitely agree about the gay part. No homo, though. There’s just some really hot dudes out there.”(Feenie’s side-eye was so intense while the others were answering this part LOLOLOLOLOL.) A really good first date with someone you’d want to see again.  My Reaction: People I would consider very beautiful. A near-perfect season finale. I’ve also cried at this level, which was interesting. o Possible tie-in to romantic feels? Not sure yet. Orange-Red  Friends’ Reaction: “When lust and love collide.” “That Japanese saying ‘koi no yokan.’ It’s kind of like love at first sight but not really. You meet someone and you know you two have a future, like someday you’ll fall in love. Just not right now.” (<-- I like this answer best, yes.) “If I really, really like a girl and I’m interested in her as a person, guess. I’d be cool if she liked the same games as me so we could play together.”  My Reaction: Something that gives me chills or has that time-stopping factor. Lots of staring. An extremely well-decorated room. Singers who have really good voices and can hit and hold superb high notes, like Whitney Houston. Model: Jasmine Tooke. Paring: Abbie and Ichabod from Sleepy Hollow o Romantic thoughts? Someday my prince (or princess, because who am I kidding?) will come? Red (aka the most controversial code)  Friends’ Reaction: “Panty-dropping levels” (<-- wtf Casey???).  “Naked girls.” ”Ryan. And ripped dudes who like to cook topless.”  “K-pop and anime girls.” (<-- Dear. God. The whole table went silent after he said that. Jocelyn was SO UNCOMFORTABLE but tried to hide it OMG it was bad. Fennie literally tried to slap some sense into him.)  My Reaction: Uncontrollable staring. Urge to touch is strong, which I must fight because not everyone is cool with that. There may even be slack-jawed drooling involved. I think that’s what would happen. I’ve never seen or experienced anything that I would give Red to.

You didn’t tell me,” he says. “Why not?” “Because I didn’t…” I shake my head. “I didn’t know how to.” He scowls. “It’s pretty easy, Tris--” “Oh yeah,” I say, nodding. “It’s so easy. All I have to do is go up to you and say, ‘By the way, I shot Will, and now guilt is ripping me to shreds, but what’s for breakfast?’ Right? Right?” Suddenly it is too much, too much to contain. Tears fill my eyes, and I yell, “Why don’t you try killing one of your best friends and then dealing with the consequences?” I cover my face with my hands. I don’t want him to see me sobbing again. He touches my shoulder. “Tris,” he says, gently this time. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t pretend that I understand. I just meant that…” He struggles for a moment. “I wish you trusted me enough to tell me things like that.” I do trust you, is what I want to say. But it isn’t true--I didn’t trust him to love me despite the terrible things I had done. I don’t trust anyone to do that, but that isn’t his problem; it’s mine. “I mean,” he says, “I had to find out that you almost drowned in a water tank from Caleb. Doesn’t that seem a little strange to you?” Just when I was about to apologize. I wipe my cheeks hard with my fingertips and stare at him. “Other things seem stranger,” I say, trying to make my voice light. “Like finding out that your boyfriend’s supposedly dead mother is still alive by seeing her in person. Or overhearing his plans to ally with the factionless, but he never tells you about it. That seems a little strange to me.” He takes his hand from my shoulder. “Don’t pretend this is only my problem,” I say. “If I don’t trust you, you don’t trust me either.” “I thought we would get to those things eventually,” he says. “Do I have to tell you everything right away?” I feel so frustrated I can’t even speak for a few seconds. Heat fills my cheeks. “God, Four!” I snap. “You don’t want to have to tell me everything right away, but I have to tell you everything right away? Can’t you see how stupid that is?” “First of all, don’t use that name like a weapon against me,” he says, pointing at me. “Second, I was not making plans to ally with the factionless; I was just thinking it over. If I had made a decision, I would have said something to you. And third, it would be different if you had actually intended to tell me about Will at some point, but it’s obvious that you didn’t.” “I did tell you about Will!” I say. “That wasn’t truth serum; it was me. I said it because I chose to.” “What are you talking about?” “I was aware. Under the serum. I could have lied; I could have kept it from you. But I didn’t, because I thought you deserved to know the truth.” “What a way to tell me!” he says, scowling. “In front of over a hundred people! How intimate!” “Oh, so it’s not enough that I told you; it has to be in the right setting?” I raise my eyebrows. “Next time should I brew some tea and make sure the lighting is right, too?” Tobias lets out a frustrated sound and turns away from me, pacing a few steps. When he turns back, his cheeks are splotchy. I can’t remember ever seeing his face change color before. “Sometimes,” he says quietly, “it isn’t easy to be with you, Tris.” He looks away. I want to tell him that I know it’s not easy, but I wouldn’t have made it through the past week without him. But I just stare at him, my heart pounding in my ears. I can’t tell him I need him. I can’t need him, period--or really, we can’t need each other, because who knows how long either of us will last in this war? “I’m sorry,” I say, all my anger gone. “I should have been honest with you.” “That’s it? That’s all you have to say?” He frowns. “What else do you want me to say?” He just shakes his head. “Nothing, Tris. Nothing.” I watch him walk away. I feel like a space has opened up within me, expanding so rapidly it will break me apart.

You didn’t tell me,” he says. “Why not?” “Because I didn’t…” I shake my head. “I didn’t know how to.” He scowls. “It’s pretty easy, Tris--” “Oh yeah,” I say, nodding. “It’s so easy. All I have to do is go up to you and say, ‘By the way, I shot Will, and now guilt is ripping me to shreds, but what’s for breakfast?’ Right? Right?” Suddenly it is too much, too much to contain. Tears fill my eyes, and I yell, “Why don’t you try killing one of your best friends and then dealing with the consequences?” I cover my face with my hands. I don’t want him to see me sobbing again. He touches my shoulder. “Tris,” he says, gently this time. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t pretend that I understand. I just meant that…” He struggles for a moment. “I wish you trusted me enough to tell me things like that.” I do trust you, is what I want to say. But it isn’t true--I didn’t trust him to love me despite the terrible things I had done. I don’t trust anyone to do that, but that isn’t his problem; it’s mine. “I mean,” he says, “I had to find out that you almost drowned in a water tank from Caleb. Doesn’t that seem a little strange to you?” Just when I was about to apologize. I wipe my cheeks hard with my fingertips and stare at him. “Other things seem stranger,” I say, trying to make my voice light. “Like finding out that your boyfriend’s supposedly dead mother is still alive by seeing her in person. Or overhearing his plans to ally with the factionless, but he never tells you about it. That seems a little strange to me.” He takes his hand from my shoulder. “Don’t pretend this is only my problem,” I say. “If I don’t trust you, you don’t trust me either.” “I thought we would get to those things eventually,” he says. “Do I have to tell you everything right away?” I feel so frustrated I can’t even speak for a few seconds. Heat fills my cheeks. “God, Four!” I snap. “You don’t want to have to tell me everything right away, but I have to tell you everything right away? Can’t you see how stupid that is?” “First of all, don’t use that name like a weapon against me,” he says, pointing at me. “Second, I was not making plans to ally with the factionless; I was just thinking it over. If I had made a decision, I would have said something to you. And third, it would be different if you had actually intended to tell me about Will at some point, but it’s obvious that you didn’t.” “I did tell you about Will!” I say. “That wasn’t truth serum; it was me. I said it because I chose to.” “What are you talking about?” “I was aware. Under the serum. I could have lied; I could have kept it from you. But I didn’t, because I thought you deserved to know the truth.” “What a way to tell me!” he says, scowling. “In front of over a hundred people! How intimate!” “Oh, so it’s not enough that I told you; it has to be in the right setting?” I raise my eyebrows. “Next time should I brew some tea and make sure the lighting is right, too?” Tobias lets out a frustrated sound and turns away from me, pacing a few steps. When he turns back, his cheeks are splotchy. I can’t remember ever seeing his face change color before. “Sometimes,” he says quietly, “it isn’t easy to be with you, Tris.” He looks away. I want to tell him that I know it’s not easy, but I wouldn’t have made it through the past week without him. But I just stare at him, my heart pounding in my ears. I can’t tell him I need him. I can’t need him, period--or really, we can’t need each other, because who knows how long either of us will last in this war? “I’m sorry,” I say, all my anger gone. “I should have been honest with you.” “That’s it? That’s all you have to say?” He frowns. “What else do you want me to say?” He just shakes his head. “Nothing, Tris. Nothing.” I watch him walk away. I feel like a space has opened up within me, expanding so rapidly it will break me apart.

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

It’s okay,” I said, my voice breaking. “It’s okay. You guys stay back here. Try to help the others. I can’t let her hurt anyone else. She won’t leave until she gets me.” “You,” Lend whispered, then looked at Reth. “Something unspoken passed between them. “Keep her safe,” Lend said fiercely. Reth nodded. “Always.” Lend leaned forward and smashed his lips into mine, kissing me desperately, then pulled away. “I love you,” he said, his glamour melting off so it was him, just him for a heartbeat, and I got ready to stand and be lost forever. Then he replaced his water self with: Me. “No!” I screamed, but Reth wrapped his arms around me and traced one finger down my throat, freezing my voice. I screamed and screamed, ripping my throat to shreds but no sound came out. Lend-as-me stood up, lifting both hands in the air. “I’m coming,” my voice said. “Stop.” He walked out from behind the counter and I couldn’t see him and she’d kill him and I’d lose him forever and I couldn’t live in a world where he wasn’t. I kicked against the counter as hard as I could, trying to force Reth to let me go, but his arms weren’t flesh, they were permanent, there was no give. I slammed my head back into his chest again and again, but then I felt more than heard her faerie door closing as the air thinned again and I knew it was over and my world had been destroyed. Lend was gone, and it was my fault. I slammed my head against Reth again in rage; he pulled me closer and said, in a voice tender and sad, “Sleep.

William was only one year old, and his mother was proud of him, he was so pretty... He was a joy to her, the twining wisps of hair clustering round his head. Mrs Morel lay listening, one Sunday morning, to the chatter of the two. Then she dozed off. When she came downstairs... seated in his armchair, against the chimney piece, sat Morel, rather timid: and standing between his legs, the child - cropped like a sheep, with such an odd round poll - looking wondering at her: and on a newspaper spread out upon the hearth rug, a myriad of crescent-shaped curls, like the petals of a marigold scattered in the reddening firelight. Mrs Morel stood still. It was her first baby. She went very white, and was unable to speak. "What dost think on 'im?" Morel laughed uneasily. She gripped her two fists, lifted them, and came forward. Morel shrank back... Her lip trembled, her face broke, and, snatching up the child, she buried her face in his shoulder and cried painfully. She was one of those women who cannot cry: whom it hurts as it hurts a man. It was like the ripping something out of her, her sobbing... She went about her work with closed mouth and very quiet... She spoke to him civilly, and never alluded to what he had done. But he felt something final had happened. ...But she knew, and Morel knew, that that act had caused something momentous to take place in her soul. She remembered that scene all her life, as one in which she had suffered the most intensely. This act of masculine clumsiness was a spear through the side of her love for Morel.

I couldn’t wait to follow through. I couldn’t wait to end this. “Your revenge?” Matthias laughed. “You’re revenge? What could you possibly do that would make any difference to me?” I looked up at Kane and he looked down at me. I smiled at him sweetly and he smiled back. I leaned in and he mirrored me. I tilted my face up to kiss him and he gladly reciprocated. Then I pulled back and swiveled my gaze to Matthias. “I will take your family away. Just like you took mine. I will pluck them from you one by one and make them suffer until they beg for death. Or, I will simply rescue them and give them a better life than you ever could.” Matthias barked out a louder laugh. “That’s sweet. It sounds like you’ve put thought into all that, but you can’t. It’s just not possible. “Sure it is,” I told him. “I’ve already gotten two of your children. Tyler isn’t here.” I gestured at Tyler. “Tyler will never be here. Unless you count that. Which being a self-respecting person, I wouldn’t. But who knows about you. And Miller isn’t here either. Miller is worse than Tyler. Look! You got Tyler to come to breakfast, but I seem to have forgotten Miller’s excuse. Could you remind me?” He stayed quiet. Which was a miracle in itself. So I continued, “I’m waiting for the right opportunity for Linley. I’ve been waiting for it for a while now. I’ve been watching her and watching her and just waiting. I cannot wait until I get her alone. I cannot wait until it’s just the two of us. It will be so fun. It’s what helps get me through these long days. Just thoughts of Linley. Just thoughts of what I will do to her and how slowly I will make those last painful moments last. And Kane? I could take him in a second. I could rip him out of your hands so fast you would blink and he would be gone. He might deny that if you ask him. But I know better. I hear everything else he says. I feel everything else he means. Kane is mine. You’re a smart man, Matthias, so don’t think for a second he isn’t. Right?” I turned to Kane. He leaned down again and kissed me. Point proved. I relaxed into Kane and let my threats soothe my soul and settle over the man I wanted to watch burn in hell. His reply was an arrogant smirk and hard eyes. “Little girl, you just asked for trouble, I’m-” “Do it,” I hissed. “Do whatever it is you want to do and see if I’m bluffing. Try me! Hurt someone I love. Hurt me. Take something away from me and see how painfully and how permanently I take something away from you.” I stood up and pushed aggressively away from the table. I stared him down the entire time. Kane let me go without even an attempt to restrain me. I was beyond that. I was beyond all of this. I was leaving. Today. Because without a doubt I would follow through with every single one of my threats. I stomped from the warehouse. I could feel Kane behind me, but he still didn’t try to slow me down. And I knew he wouldn’t. He really was mine. Matthias, Hendrix, nobody could take him from me. And he would do whatever I wanted as long as he thought we could survive. I hoped both of us could survive what I was about to ask him to do.

What is it that makes a person the very person that she is, herself alone and not another, an integrity of identity that persists over time, undergoing changes and yet still continuing to be—until she does not continue any longer, at least not unproblematically? I stare at the picture of a small child at a summer’s picnic, clutching her big sister’s hand with one tiny hand while in the other she has a precarious hold on a big slice of watermelon that she appears to be struggling to have intersect with the small o of her mouth. That child is me. But why is she me? I have no memory at all of that summer’s day, no privileged knowledge of whether that child succeeded in getting the watermelon into her mouth. It’s true that a smooth series of contiguous physical events can be traced from her body to mine, so that we would want to say that her body is mine; and perhaps bodily identity is all that our personal identity consists in. But bodily persistence over time, too, presents philosophical dilemmas. The series of contiguous physical events has rendered the child’s body so different from the one I glance down on at this moment; the very atoms that composed her body no longer compose mine. And if our bodies are dissimilar, our points of view are even more so. Mine would be as inaccessible to her—just let her try to figure out [Spinoza’s] Ethics—as hers is now to me. Her thought processes, prelinguistic, would largely elude me. Yet she is me, that tiny determined thing in the frilly white pinafore. She has continued to exist, survived her childhood illnesses, the near-drowning in a rip current on Rockaway Beach at the age of twelve, other dramas. There are presumably adventures that she—that is that I—can’t undergo and still continue to be herself. Would I then be someone else or would I just no longer be? Were I to lose all sense of myself—were schizophrenia or demonic possession, a coma or progressive dementia to remove me from myself—would it be I who would be undergoing those trials, or would I have quit the premises? Would there then be someone else, or would there be no one? Is death one of those adventures from which I can’t emerge as myself? The sister whose hand I am clutching in the picture is dead. I wonder every day whether she still exists. A person whom one has loved seems altogether too significant a thing to simply vanish altogether from the world. A person whom one loves is a world, just as one knows oneself to be a world. How can worlds like these simply cease altogether? But if my sister does exist, then what is she, and what makes that thing that she now is identical with the beautiful girl laughing at her little sister on that forgotten day? In this passage from Betraying Spinoza, the philosopher and novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein (to whom I am married) explains the philosophical puzzle of personal identity, one of the problems that engaged the Dutch-Jewish thinker who is the subject of her book.5 Like her fellow humanist Dawkins, Goldstein analyzes the vertiginous enigma of existence and death, but their styles could not be more different—a reminder of the diverse ways that the resources of language can be deployed to illuminate a topic.

And for the four remaining days - the ninety-six remaining hours - we mapped out a future away from everything we knew. When the walls of the map were breached, we gave one another courage to build them again. And we imagined our home an old stone barn filled with junk and wine and paintings, surrounded by fields of wildflowers and bees. I remember our final day in the villa. We were supposed to be going that evening, taking the sleeper back to England. I was on edge, a mix of nerves and excitement, looking out to see if he made the slightest move toward leaving, but he didn’t. Toiletries remained on the bathroom shelves, clothes stayed scattered across the floor. We went to the beach as usual, lay side by side in our usual spot. The heat was intense and we said little, certainly nothing of our plans to move up to Provence, to the lavender and light. To the fields of sunflowers. I looked at my watch. We were almost there. It was happening. I kept saying to myself, he’s going to do it. I left him on the bed dozing, and went out to the shop to get water and peaches. I walked the streets as if they were my new home. Bonjour to everyone, me walking barefoot, oh so confident, free. And I imagined how we’d go out later to eat, and we’d celebrate at our bar. And I’d phone Mabel and Mabel would say, I understand. I raced back to the villa, ran up the stairs and died. Our rucksacks were open on the bed, our shoes already packed away inside. I watched him from the door. He was silent, his eyes red. He folded his clothes meticulously, dirty washing in separate bags. I wanted to howl. I wanted to put my arms around him, hold him there until the train had left the station. I’ve got peaches and water for the journey, I said. Thank you, he said. You think of everything. Because I love you, I said. He didn’t look at me. The change was happening too quickly. Is there a taxi coming? My voice was weak, breaking. Madame Cournier’s taking us. I went to open the window, the scent of tuberose strong. I lit a cigarette and looked at the sky. An airplane cast out a vivid orange wake that ripped across the violet wash. And I remember thinking, how cruel it was that our plans were out there somewhere. Another version of our future, out there somewhere, in perpetual orbit. The bottle of pastis? he said. I smiled at him. You take it, I said. We lay in our bunks as the sleeper rattled north and retraced the journey of ten days before. The cabin was dark, an occasional light from the corridor bled under the door. The room was hot and airless, smelled of sweat. In the darkness, he dropped his hand down to me and waited. I couldn’t help myself, I reached up and held it. Noticed my fingertips were numb. We’ll be OK, I remember thinking. Whatever we are, we’ll be OK. We didn’t see each other for a while back in Oxford. We both suffered, I know we did, but differently. And sometimes, when the day loomed gray, I’d sit at my desk and remember the heat of that summer. I’d remember the smells of tuberose that were carried by the wind, and the smell of octopus cooking on the stinking griddles. I’d remember the sound of our laughter and the sound of a doughnut seller, and I’d remember the red canvas shoes I lost in the sea, and the taste of pastis and the taste of his skin, and a sky so blue it would defy anything else to be blue again. And I’d remember my love for a man that almost made everything possible./

Consider a world in which cause and effect are erratic. Sometimes the first precedes the second, sometimes the second the first. Or perhaps cause lies forever in the past while effect in the future, but future and past are entwined. On the terrace of the Bundesterrasse is a striking view: the river Aare below and the Bernese Alps above. A man stands there just now, absently emptying his pockets and weeping. Without reason, his friends have abandoned him. No one calls any more, no one meets him for supper or beer at the tavern, no one invites him to their home. For twenty years he has been the ideal friend to his friends, generous, interested, soft-spoken, affectionate. What could have happened? A week from this moment on the terrace, the same man begins acting the goat, insulting everyone, wearing smelly clothes, stingy with money, allowing no one to come to his apartment on Laupenstrasse. Which was cause and which effect, which future and which past? In Zürich, strict laws have recently been approved by the Council. Pistols may not be sold to the public. Banks and trading houses must be audited. All visitors, whether entering Zürich by boat on the river Limmat or by rail on the Selnau line, must be searched for contraband. The civil military is doubled. One month after the crackdown, Zürich is ripped by the worst crimes in its history. In daylight, people are murdered in the Weinplatz, paintings are stolen from the Kunsthaus, liquor is drunk in the pews of the Münsterhof. Are these criminal acts not misplaced in time? Or perhaps the new laws were action rather than reaction? A young woman sits near a fountain in the Botanischer Garten. She comes here every Sunday to smell the white double violets, the musk rose, the matted pink gillyflowers. Suddenly, her heart soars, she blushes, she paces anxiously, she becomes happy for no reason. Days later, she meets a young man and is smitten with love. Are the two events not connected? But by what bizarre connection, by what twist in time, by what reversed logic? In this acausal world, scientists are helpless. Their predictions become postdictions. Their equations become justifications, their logic, illogic. Scientists turn reckless and mutter like gamblers who cannot stop betting. Scientists are buffoons, not because they are rational but because the cosmos is irrational. Or perhaps it is not because the cosmos is irrational but because they are rational. Who can say which, in an acausal world? In this world, artists are joyous. Unpredictability is the life of their paintings, their music, their novels. They delight in events not forecasted, happenings without explanation, retrospective. Most people have learned how to live in the moment. The argument goes that if the past has uncertain effect on the present, there is no need to dwell on the past. And if the present has little effect on the future, present actions need not be weighed for their consequence. Rather, each act is an island in time, to be judged on its own. Families comfort a dying uncle not because of a likely inheritance, but because he is loved at that moment. Employees are hired not because of their résumés, but because of their good sense in interviews. Clerks trampled by their bosses fight back at each insult, with no fear for their future. It is a world of impulse. It is a world of sincerity. It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning, each touch has no past or no future, each kiss is a kiss of immediacy.

I should say goodbye to him in the lounge, perhaps, before we left. A furtive, scrambled farewell, because of her, and there would be a pause, and a smile, and words like 'Yes, of course, do write', and 'I've never thanked you properly for being so kind', and 'You must forward those snapshots', 'What about your address?' 'Well, I'll have to let you know". And he would light a cigarette casually, asking a passing waiter for a light, while I thought, 'Four and a half more minutes to go. I shall never see him again.' Because I was going, because it was over, there would suddenly be nothing more to say, we would be strangers, meeting for the last and only time, while my mind clamoured painfully, crying 'I love you so much. I'm terribly unhappy. This has never come to me before, and never will again.' My face would be set in a prim, conventional smile, my voice would be saying, 'Look at that funny old man over there; I wonder who he is; he must be new here.' And we would waste the last moments laughing at a stranger, because we were already strangers to one another. 'I hope the snapshots come out well,' repeating oneself in desperation, and he 'Yes, that one of the square ought to be good; the light was just right.' Having both of us gone into all that at the time, having agreed upon it, and anyway I would not care if the result was fogged and black, because this was the last moment, the final goodbye had been attained. 'Well,' my dreadful smile stretching across my face, 'thanks most awfully once again, it's been so ripping..." using words I had never used before. Ripping: what did it mean? - God knows, I did not care; it was the sort of word that schoolgirls had for hockey, wildly inappropriate to those past weeks of misery and exultation. Then the doors of the lift would open upon Mrs Van Hopper and I would cross the lounge to meet her, and he would stroll back again to his corner and pick up a paper.

I kept my head down and my mouth full. I didn't want Frankie's sharp eyes or tongue focused on me any more than necessary. It was a lot easier with Daniel taking up half of the food and most of the air. "What about it, Ella?" he asked when everything was gone except the parsley garnish. "When do we get the pleasure of your vocal stylings?" "I don't sing." "You mean you won't sng," Sadie corrected. I tried to be charitable about her treason; she goes pretty brainless around Daniel. "Ella sings really well." "I'm sure she does." Daniel tipped his beer glass in my direction. "In fact, I bet she could totally murder 'Don't Stop Believin'." A song that is actually one of my guilty pleasures. I think he probably knew that. I think he probably had himself a lovely chuckle over it.Then he whispered, "Coward." In another story, the plucky little heroine would have slapped both hands onto the table, making it wobble a little on its predicatbly uneven fourth leg. She would then have taken both hands, ripped the long scarf from around her neck and, chin high and scar spotlit, stalked to the dais, leaped up, and slayed the audience with her kick-ass version of "Respect." Or maybe "Single Ladies," for the sheer Yay factor. In this version,I gave Daniel what I hoped was a slayer look and busied myself refolding my napkin. He was,not surprisingly, unfazed. "Can I ask you a question?" I sighed. "Will my answer to that one make any difference?" "None whatsoever." "Fine," I grumbled. "Ask." I didn't have to answer.He wasn't my Hobbes. "Why are there interstate highways in Hawaii?" I gaped at him. "That's your question?" "Nope." He leaned back in his chair, propping one foot on the other knee. "That's a question. My question is this: What's the one thing you should ask yourself before getting involved with someone?" "Seriously?" "Do I look serious?" Maybe not serious, but vaguely deadly. Still,it was an interesting question, especially coming from Daniel Hobbes. I thought for a second. "'Will he make me happy?'" "You think?" Daniel asked, the unfolded himself and got to his feet. "I'm outta here. Who's coming?

Coney Island Baby" You know, man, when I was a young man in high school You believe in or not, that I wanted to play football for the coach All those older guys, they said he was mean and cruel But you know, I wanted to play football, for the coach They said I was to little too light weight to play line-back So I say I'm playing right-in Wanted to play football for the coach Cause, you know some day, man, you gotta stand up straight Unless you're gonna fall Then you're gonna die And the straightest dude I ever knew Was standing right for me, all the time So I had to play football for the coach And I wanted to play football for the coach When you're all alone and lonely in your midnight hour And you find that your soul, it has been up for sale And you getting to think about, all the things you done And you getting to hate just about everything But remember the princess who lived on the hill Who loved you even though she knew you was wrong And right now she just might come shining through and the glory of love, glory of love Glory of love, just might come through And all your two-bit friends have gone and ripped you off They're talking behind your back saying, man you are never going to be a human being And you start thinking again About all those things that you've done And who it was and who it was And all the different things you made every different scene Ah, but remember that the city is a funny place Something like a circus or a sewer And just remember, different people have peculiar tastes And the Glory of love, the glory of love The glory of love, might see you through Yeah, but now, now Glory of love, the glory of love The glory of love, might see you through Glory of love, ah, huh, huh, the glory of love Glory of love, glory of love Glory of love, now, glory of love, now Glory of love, now, now, now, glory of love Glory of love, give it to me now, glory of love see you through Oh, my Coney Island baby, now (I'm a Coney Island baby, now) I'd like to send this one out for Lou and Rachel And the Lord appeared and he has one made of two Coney Island baby Man, I swear, I'd give the whole thing up for you Lou Reed, Coney Island Baby (1975)

Tempestuous plains tell the tale, Windswept wastes do bewail, Haunting Spirit of the land, Seeks the living, seeks the damned. Horizoned edge sheared with grass, Dark Storm Rising in the pass, Ageless Spirit seeks the path, To torment souls to the last. Brooding Spirit upon the plain, Thunderhead gathers for the rain. Light grows dim then bolts with pain, On dry Earth her sin is stained. (Frightened creatures do stampede, Into night, they do recede). Ungodded hand on seasoned blade, Reaps the harvest of the Age. Released from her eternal din, Spirit of the Age rises again. Seeking to plunder and consume, Those who were proud, those who presumed. Spirits rage while storm draws nigh, Upon burning plain and emblazoned sky. It is said giants grapple in the Earth so deep, To contend for souls that they might keep. The Storm spirit now searches the high and the low, To seek her manchild victim in the fields below. Leaves bad wasteland to claim but a fallen man, Denying it Heaven, crowning it, ‘Son of the Damned.’ Treacherous Spirit of the far lost night, Tramples souls down denying them light. Storm seethes with furious hiss, Leads men on to bottomless pit. This most ancient of foes has come from her den, To seek the living, to make ready those dead. A living sacrifice is her soul desire, To snatch the soul for black funeral pyre. A double-damned devil, that is she, This one who lies, who claims to make free. A lying spirit, that is her domain, A storm-wracked Fury of self-proclaim. Onward she seeks, this bleak Northern wind, Searching for naught but for a soul akin. Amidst the howling and the rage, To murder again, that is her trade. As this spirit of graves left the plain, She left a wake of dead in shrouded train. Now down from the plain Storm did come, Unto those cities wherein was no sun. There with whirlwind she did rip and scour, For those souls of whom she could tear and devour. She comes to seek the living and the dead, Those who were frightened, those with no dread. Thus upon those she did acclaim, “I am the Mistress of the living and the slain.” O’ haunting Spirit of this land, Taker of life, maker of the damned. --On Villainess Storm, Ch. One Valley of the Damned

At some point I tried willing things along, mentally focusing on a rapid delivery. That didn't work. I got up to walk around-walking is supposed to help you progress-then quickly got back in the chair. “Argh!!!!!” I groaned. And other stuff. The way I saw it, my baby should have been out by now, shaking hands with his dad and passing around cigars to the nurses. But he apparently had other plans. Labor continued very slowly. Very slowly. We were in that room for eighteen hours. That was a lot of contractions. And a lot of PG versions of curse words, along with the X-rated kind. I may have invented a whole new language. Somewhere around the twelve-hour mark, Chris asked if I’d mind if he changed the music, since our songs had been playing on repeat for what surely seemed like a millennium. “Sure,” I said. He switched to the radio and found a country station. That lasted a song or two. “I’m so sorry,” I told him. “I need Enya. I’m tuned in to it, and it calms me…ohhhhh!” “Okay. No problem,” he said calmly, though not quite cheerfully. I’m sure it was torture. Chris would take short breaks, walking out into the waiting room where both sides of our family were waiting to welcome their first grandchild and nephew. He’d look at his dad and give a little nod. “She’s okay,” he told everyone. Then he’d wipe a little tear away from his eye and walk back to me. Chris said later that watching me give birth was probably the most powerless feeling he’d ever had. He knew I was in pain and yet couldn’t do a whit about it. “It’s like watching your wife get stabbed and not being able to do anything to help.” But when he came into the room with me, his eyes were clear and he seemed confident and even upbeat. It was the thing he did when talking to me from the combat zone, all over again: he wasn’t about to do anything that would make me worry. I, on the other hand, made no secret of what I was feeling. An alien watermelon was ripping my insides out. And it hurt. Whoooh! Suddenly one of the contractions peaked way beyond where the others had been. Bubba had finally decided it was time to say hello to the world. I grabbed the side rail on the bed and struggled to remain conscious, if not exactly calm. Part of me was thinking, You should remember this, Taya. This is natural childbirth. This is beautiful. This is what God intended. You should enjoy this precious moment and remember it always. Another part of me was telling that part to shut the bleep up. I begged for mercy-for painkillers.

SEA” Sounds of the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur “SEA” Cherson! Cherson! You aint just whistlin Dixie, Sea— Cherson! Cherson! We calcimine fathers here below! Kitchen lights on— Sea Engines from Russia seabirding here below— When rocks outsea froth I’ll know Hawaii cracked up & scramble up my doublelegged cliff to the silt of a million years— Shoo—Shaw—Shirsh— Go on die salt light You billion yeared rock knocker Gavroom Seabird Gabroobird Sad as wife & hill Loved as mother & fog Oh! Oh! Oh! Sea! Osh! Where’s yr little Neppytune tonight? These gentle tree pulp pages which’ve nothing to do with yr crash roar, liar sea, ah, were made for rock tumble seabird digdown footstep hollow weed move bedarvaling crash? Ah again? Wine is salt here? Tidal wave kitchen? Engines of Russia in yr soft talk— Les poissons de la mer parle Breton— Mon nom es Lebris de Keroack— Parle, Poissons, Loti, parle— Parlning Ocean sanding crash the billion rocks— Ker plotsch— Shore—shoe— god—brash— The headland looks like a longnosed Collie sleeping with his light on his nose, as the ocean, obeying its accomodations of mind, crashes in rhythm which could & will intrude, in thy rhythm of sand thought— —Big frigging shoulders on that sonofabitch Parle, O, parle, mer, parle, Sea speak to me, speak to me, your silver you light Where hole opened up in Alaska Gray—shh—wind in The canyon wind in the rain Wind in the rolling rash Moving and t wedel Sea sea Diving sea O bird—la vengeance De la roche Cossez Ah Rare, he rammed the gate rare over by Cherson, Cherson, we calcify fathers here below —a watery cross, with weeds entwined—This grins restoredly, low sleep—Wave—Oh, no, shush—Shirk—Boom plop Neptune now his arms extends while one millions of souls sit lit in caves of darkness —What old bark? The dog mountain? Down by the Sea Engines? God rush—Shore— Shaw—Shoo—Oh soft sigh we wait hair twined like larks—Pissit—Rest not —Plottit, bisp tesh, cashes, re tav, plo, aravow, shirsh,—Who’s whispering over there—the silly earthen creek! The fog thunders—We put silver light on face—We took the heroes in—A billion years aint nothing— O the cities here below! The men with a thousand arms! the stanchions of their upward gaze! the coral of their poetry! the sea dragons tenderized, meat for fleshy fish— Navark, navark, the fishes of the Sea speak Breton— wash as soft as people’s dreams—We got peoples in & out the shore, they call it shore, sea call it pish rip plosh—The 5 billion years since earth we saw substantial chan—Chinese are the waves—the woods are dreaming

Dear, What’s the Point of it All? What is the point of being nice? When you do not know what you are going to get from it? Knowing eventually sooner rather than later someone and maybe that person you are being nice to will turn their back on you. I always have to stay grounded and focused. When I am there for people, I feel like I am always punished for it. I am always treated as if I committed a crime. I was there for my mom; however, she was killing me slowly but surely. Like my mom, I noticed that when people get themselves in some shit, they get stuck in their own mess. They are confident that they do not have to deal with the consequences—because they know the ‘kind’ person will bail them out. What’s the point of being kind? Like my mom and the officer, there are so many people in the world who are judgmental and tainted because of their selfish needs. What’s the point of my life? Here I am in a library filled with many books. I can read them and go anywhere I want to in my mind, but after I close the book, I will have to snap out of my fantasy world and welcome the cruel cold world, which is reality. If I was a book, I would be better off left on the shelf. There is no excitement in my life—only struggles. What’s the point of living and loving life when the only thing I do is read between the lines and tread carefully? Come to think about it, I am a book that nobody can understand or read. They think they know what is best for me, but if they only take the time to listen, I would be so happy to tell them about me and my needs and wants. My actions scream for attention, but time after time, I am ignored. Sadly, without a care, they were quick to rip out the pages. Yet, once again, nobody noticed me. What’s the point of it all when I never had an opportunity to make a mistake? If I did one thing wrong, they would give up on me and send me to one home after another. I’ve always been fully exposed and had to walk in a line filled with sharp curves from disappointment to disappointment. Sorrow is my aura, and sadness hugs me tightly. It is hard to cry when my eyes are closed shut by the barbed wire fence of my eyelashes as they prohibit tears from falling. What’s the point of complicating my life? I am always back to where I started, and then ... I relive the same patterns, but on a more difficult journey. I believe when you put yourself in your own mess that you should clean it up and start over. What’s wrong with that? Nothing. However, when someone else puts you in their mess, you do not know how to clean up the mess they’ve made. You do not know how to start over because you do not know where to begin. I look at it this way; it is like telling a dead person he/she can start over. How so, when that person’s life no longer exists? I know my life isn’t over. However, I am lost in a maze my mom set up for herself—and she too is lost in her own maze. When a person gets lost in their own maze, they are really fucked up. However, this maze shouldn’t be left for me to figure out. Unfortunately, I am in it, and I have to find my way out one way or another. What’s the point of taking Kace from me? He was safe and in good hands. Now he is worse off with people who are abusing him. He didn’t ask for this—I didn’t either. He deserves so much better. Again, what is the point of it all? What’s the point of making me suffer? Do you get a kick out of it? What are you trying to accomplish? I am trying to understand; what is the point of it all? What is the point? I don’t know why I am here.

that everything that had ever happened to me had been a loving step in that process of my progression. every person, every circumstance, and every incident was custom created for me. It was as if the entire universe existed for my higher good and development. I felt so loved, so cherished, and so honored. I realized that not only was I being embraced by deity, but also that I myself was divine, and that we all are. I knew that there are no accidents in this life. That everything happens for a reason. yet we always get to choose how we will experience what happens to us here. I could exercise my will in everything, even in how I felt about the wreck and the death of my family members. God didn't want me to hurt and feel put upon as if my son and wife had been taken from me. He was simply there assisting me to decide how I was going to experience it. He was providing me with the opportunity, in perfect love, to exercise my personal agency in this entire situation. I knew my wife and son were gone. They had died months earlier, but time didn't exist where I was at that moment. rather than having them ripped away from me, I was being given the opportunity to actually hand them over to God. To let them go in peace, love, and gratitude. Everything suddenly made sense. Everything had divine order. I could give my son to God and not have him taken away from me. I felt my power as a creator and cocreator with God to literally let go of all that had happened to me. I held my baby son as God himself held me. I experienced the oneness of all of it. Time did not matter. Only love and order existed. Tamara and Griffin had come into my life as perfect teachers. And in leaving me in such a way, they continued as perfect teachers to bring me to that point of remembering who I was. remembering that I was created in God's image and actually came from Him. I was aware now that I could actually walk with God, empowered by what I was learning in my life. I felt the divine energy of the being behind me inviting me to let it all go and give Griffin to Him. In all that peace and knowledge, I hugged my little boy tightly one last time, kissed him on the cheek, and gently laid him back down in the crib. I willingly gave him up. No one would ever take him away from me again. He was mine. We were one, and I was one with God. As soon as I breathed in all that peace, I awoke, back into the pain and darkness of my hospital bed, but with greater perspective. I marveled at what I had just experienced. It was not just a dream. It felt too real. It was real to me, far more real than the pain, the grief, and my hospital bed. Griffin was alive in a place more real than anything here. And Tamara was there with him. I knew it. As the years have passed, I've often wondered how I could have put my son back in the crib the way I did. Maybe I should have held on and never let go. But in that place, it all made sense. I realized that no one ever really dies. We always live on. I had experienced a God as real and tangible as we are. He knows our every heartache, yet allows us to experience and endure them for our growth. His is the highest form of love; He allows us to become what we will. He watches as we create who we are. He allows us to experience life in a way that makes us more like Him, divine creators of our own destiny. My experience showed me purpose and order. I knew there was a master plan far greater than my limited earthly vision. I also learned that my choices were mine alone to make. I got to decide how I felt, and that made all the difference in the universe. even in this tragedy, I got to determine the outcome. I could choose to be a victim of what had happened or create something far greater.

I’m first up, love,” Arion says as he starts invading my space again. “I thought the only thing holding you back was your fear. Clearly the fear is absent if you’re willing to turn yourself over to the very darkest part of me. It’s amazing you’re in one piece, so clearly you played submissive very well, Violet. It’s because you were ready for me to save you and overcame your fear of me. Now we can be together.” When I say nothing and simply stare at him like he’s forever losing his mind more and more when we speak, he frowns like he’s genuinely perplexed. “Arion, no matter what you did, I couldn’t have endured another second of those cries. And you were at Abby’s mercy while in that state. You ripped my throat out and told me to put on some healing potion so you could sit down and watch the fight.” Apparently, I guess right, because his pupils widen marginally. “I held your hand when you finished,” he says like he’s defending himself. “So you could watch the fight.” “Vance was focused. It’s been ages since he focused. Thing of beauty while it happens,” he says as if that’s important information. I gesture between us. “That’s sort of the problem. I feel like the conduit for your feelings for them because you have heterosexual body parts with a homosexual mentality. I’m not sure I’m okay with simply being a conduit,” I carefully explain, causing his eyes to widen a little more, as several muffled sounds of amusement spring from somewhere else in the room. “I’m sorry, love, but you’ve really lost me,” Arion says very seriously, brow crinkling. “You want this to be a thing between you and me, even though Idun is returning, because you want them back. It looks like you’re getting that without me, so we can be friends,” I suggest, completely rambling. I don’t think I’m explaining this very well, since they’re all muffling laughter down the hall. Even Vance makes a choked sound of amusement. Or they’re just really immature about these things… That’s definitely possible. Arion scrubs a hand over his face, as someone struggles to cover a surprise laugh with a cough. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t be having this conversation right now. It’s inappropriate to do with an audience,” I babble. “But you’re really intense. And I’ve just survived an apocalyptic wolf storm with your mostly naked beta, whose threads are still in my bra because one set of clothes ended up being enough.” The look of frustrated confusion on his face doubles. “I could use a small break before we discuss curses, some really confusing relationship statuses, and the somewhat terrifying woman you’ve all loved rising very soon. And those wolves stole my oranges, so I need to go back and get all of them.” “I’ve already returned them to your cellar,” Emit says from somewhere behind Arion. “Then I need to go start using them while they’re useable,” I say as I quickly disentangle myself from Arion and attempt to escape. “I’ll return the shirt.” “Keep it,” he says quietly from behind me, as I finally take in the other three all standing somewhat close together, smirking at me. “I’ll drive you home,” Damien says with a slow grin. “I’m not talking to you, and if you’re a smart man, you’ll figure out why,” I state firmly. “Only when you figure it out will we discuss it.” “I’ll take you—” “I don’t want to talk to you right now, because I need to get my cool back,” I tell Emit, whose eyes immediately flick away, as his jaw tics. He’s had multiple opportunities to explain to me why he told Damien I was a monster, and yet didn’t even bother telling me what I was. All this time, I’ve been patiently waiting, refusing to get too angry. Now…I’m getting sort of freaking angry, because he still hasn’t said one word about it. “Guess that just leaves me,” Vance says as he puts his hand at the small of my back and starts guiding me out.