Slip Through The Cracks Quotes

She knew how people slipped through cracks—not all at once, but in layers.

Look at us. Two lonely kids who slipped through all the cracks, but then climbed right back up to the top of the world.

But maybe you never really had someone, she thought now. Maybe, no matter how much you loved them, they could slip through your fingers like water, and there was nothing you could do about it. She understood why people talked about hearts "breaking"; she felt as if hers were made of cracked glass, and the shards were like tiny knives inside her chest when she breathed.

Moonlight slipped in through the lace curtains, slicing everything with its sliver cracks. That's how I felt right now - cold and cracked and hollow and empty.

Racing up the wide staircase, I barreled through the double doors and smacked right into a brick wall. Stumbling backward, my arms flailed like a cracked-out crossing guard. My over-packed messenger bag slipped, pulling me to one side. My hair flew it front of my face, a sheet of auburn that obscured everything as I teetered dangerously. Oh dear God, I was going down. There was no stopping it. Visions of broken necks danced in my head. This was going to suck so— Something strong and hard went around my waist, stopping my free fall. My bag hit the floor, spilling overpriced books and pens across the shiny floor. My pens! My glorious pens rolled everywhere. A second later I was pressed against the wall. The wall was strangely warm. The wall chuckled. “Whoa,” a deep voice said. “You okay, sweetheart?

He stops in his tracks, face expressing major disappointment. "Wait - seriously? That's it? We don't get to do a stealthy tiptoe as we slip around back? No sneaking through a cracked window, or arguing over who gets to crawl through the dogie door to let the other one in?

Fine, I want this. I want you. I can’t escape you, Alex. You’re like the sun. I turn away, I look down, but I can still see you reflected in everything at my feet. If I draw the curtains, you slip through the cracks. I can’t fall for the moon instead because it’s you that illuminates it. None of that changes the fact that we just won’t work. You’re not the problem here. It’s me, and things out of my control.

The sun eventually rises, it's light slipping through the cracks and illuminating Peeta's face. Who will he transform into if we make it home? This perplexing, good-natured boy who can spin out lies so convincingly the whole of Panem believes him to be hopelessly in love with me, and I'll admit it, there are moments when he makes me believe it myself?

God’s love is meteoric, his loyalty astronomic, His purpose titanic, his verdicts oceanic. Yet in his largeness nothing gets lost; Not a man, not a mouse, slips through the cracks.

You are nothing at all. Just a crack where the light slipped through.

Government is big, we are small. We are only free when we slip through the cracks.

How easy it was to slip through the cracks alongside him. To fall in the very same trap I had committed to free him from.

...a tiny gemstone, a tiny spark of color slipping between your fingers and through the cracks and gone. A heart the size of a fleck of glitter and vibrating like a hummingbird, seeded with a billion things that would never happen now.

Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden. Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future And time future contained in time past. (I) What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present. Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden. My words echo Thus, in your mind. But to what purpose Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves I do not know. (I) Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind Cannot bear very much reality. What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present. Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children, Hidden excitedly, containing laughter. Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind Cannot bear very much reality. Time past and time future What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present. (I) At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is... At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance. I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time. (II) All is always now. Time past and time future Allow but a little consciousness. To be conscious is not to be in time But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden, The moment in the arbour where the rain beat, The moment in the draughty church at smokefall Be remembered; involved with past and future. Only through time time is conquered. (II) Words move, music moves Only in time; but that which is only living Can only die. Words, after speech, reach Into the silence. (V) Or say that the end precedes the beginning, And the end and the beginning were always there Before the beginning and after the end. And all is always now. Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Will not stay still. (V) Desire itself is movement Not in itself desirable; Love is itself unmoving, Only the cause and end of movement, Timeless, and undesiring Except in the aspect of time Caught in the form of limitation Between un-being and being. (V)

It started when we were little kids. Free spirits, but already tormented by our own hands given to us by our parents. We got together and wrote on desks and slept in laundry rooms near snowy mountains and slipped through whatever cracks we could find, minds altered, we didn't falter in portraving hysterical and tragic characters in a smog filled universe. we loved the dirty city and the journeys away from it. We had not yet been or seen our friends, selves, chase tails round and round in downward spirals, leaving trail of irretrievable, vital life juice behind. Still, the brothersbloodcomradespartnerfamilycuzz was impenetrable and we lived inside it laughing with no clothes, and everything experimental 'till death was upon us. In our face, mortality.

We build museums to house history, but it slips out through the cracks of sash and jamb

God's love is meteoric, his loyalty astronomic, His purpose titanic, his verdicts oceanic. Yet in his largeness nothing gets lost; Not a man, not a mouse, slips through the cracks.

I feel a shaking in me, and it's the ground. It's like the ground is shaking and I will slip through. Then, in a flash, his hands reach out and, like in a movie, really, the coffee cup falls to the cement steps with a sharp crack, and he grabs my arms and his face is filled with everything that is urgent and loving and meaningful in the world. I feel so powerful, like a god, thunderbolt in hand. And my thunderbolt hit.

A bag of bones can slip through small cracks in a crowd effortlessly.

Lexie's baby. Four weeks . . .not quite a quarter of an inch: a tiny gemstone, a single spark of color slipping between your fingers and through the cracks and gone. A heart the size of a fleck of glitter and vibrating like a hummingbird, seeded with a billion things that would never happen now.

Information is not like money or any other commodity. The cracks that it can slip through are almost infinitely small, and it can be duplicated at almost zero cost. Soon information will be like air, like the weather, and as easy to control.

It's time for a story. I know, I know, the night is noisy. Don't be afraid. The storm rises on its hind legs, bats our tiny house in its paws - but the smaller a mouse is, the more likely iy is to escape. Here, we slip through the cracks of the world.

You’re thinking, maybe it would be easier to let it slip let it go say ”I give up” one last time and give him a sad smile. You’re thinking it shouldn’t be this hard, shouldn’t be this dark, thinking love could flow easily with no holding back and you’ve seen others find their match and build something great together, of each other, like two halves fitting perfectly and now they achieve great things one by one, always together, and it seems grand. But you love him. Love him like a black stone in your chest you couldn’t live without because it fits in there. Makes you who you are and the thought of him gone—no more—makes your chest tighten up and maybe this is your fairytale. Maybe this is your castle. You could get it all on a shiny piece of glass with wooden stools and a neverending blooming garden but that’s not yours. This is yours. The cracks and the faults, the ugly words in the winter walking home alone and angry but falling asleep thinking you love him. This is your fairy tale. The quiet in the hallway, wishing for him to turn around, tell you to stay, tell you to please don’t go I need you like you need me and maybe it’s not a Jane Austen novel but this is your novel and your castle and you can run from it your whole life but this is here in front of you. Maybe nurture it? Sweet girl, maybe close the world off and look at him for an hour or two. This is your fairy. It ain’t perfect and it ain’t honey sweet with roses on the bed. It’s real and raw and ugly at times. But this is your love. Don’t throw it away searching for someone else’s love. Don’t be greedy. Instead, shelter it. Protect it. Capture every second of easy, pull through every storm of hardship. And when you can, look at him, lying next to you, trusting you not to harm him. Trusting you not to go. Be someone’s someone for someone. Be that someone for him. That’s your fairy tale. This is your castle. Now move in. Build a home. Build a house. Build a safety around things you love. It’s yours if you make it so. Welcome home, sweet girl, it will be all be fine.

Fine, I want this. I want you. I can't escape you, Alex. You're like the sun. I turn away, I look down, but I can still see you reflected in everything at my feet. If I draw the curtains, you slip through the cracks. I can't fall for the moon instead because it's you that illuminates it.

It was always in his weakest moments the dreams came for him. Unguarded. His defenses breached. His body switched off and his memories took over. She slipped into his head and smiled like she owned every inch of his mind. It wasn’t as though his wife didn’t live there already. She held the real estate of his subconscious. Sneaking in through the cracks and deep holes left behind from her love. In sleep, there was nowhere for Reaper to hide—he could only face his lost love and bask in just how perfect she was.

But that was the thing about guilt. It didn’t give a damn about facts or reason. It sprouted from the tiniest seeds of doubt, slipped through the cracks of your psyche, and by the time you realized what the ugly darkness oozing through your veins was, it’d already burrowed itself so deep you couldn’t dig it out without losing a part of yourself.

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

So my sister, she slipped through the cracks of the disaster of our family. She became her own disaster.

Effy was no great designer, but she was an excellent escape artist. She was always chipping away at the architecture of her life until there was a crack big enough to slip through. Whenever she was faced with danger, her mind manifested a secret doorway, a hole in the floorboards, somewhere she could hide or run to.

Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism—which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly,

The Girl She Was She doesn't feel like herself. Not anymore. she was different once. Now she is like a watered-down version, pale and thin. She slips through the cracks unnoticed. She fades into the background, afraid of saying the wrong thing. She grows sharp edges and wont let anyone get close to her. She doesn't know how she came to be like this, how she ended up here. she only remembers the way she used to be—wild and reckless. Bold and unapologetic.

She wanted to touch him, to throw her arms around him — but something held her back. Maybe it was the fear that her arms would pass right through him, that she would have come all this way only to find a ghost after all. As though he’d been able to read her thoughts, he slowly angled toward her. He raised his hands and held his palms out to her. Isobel lifted her own hands to mirror his. He pressed their palms together, his fingers folding down to lace through hers. She felt a rush of warmth course through her, a relief as pure and sweet as spring rain. He was real. This was real. She had found him. She could touch him. She could feel him. Finally they were together. Finally, finally, they could forget this wasted world and go home. "I knew it wasn’t true," she whispered. "I knew you wouldn’t stop believing." He drew her close. Leaning into him, she felt him press his lips to her forehead in a kiss. As he spoke, the cool metal of his lip ring grazed her skin, causing a shudder to ripple through her. "You..." His voice, low and breathy, reverberated through her, down to the thin soles of her slippers. "You think you’re different," he said. She felt his hands tighten around hers, gripping hard, too hard. A streak of violet lightning split the sky, striking close behind them. The house, Isobel thought. It had been struck. She could hear it cracking apart. She looked for only a brief moment, long enough to watch it split open. "But you’re not," Varen said, calling her attention back to him. Isobel winced, her own hands surrendering under the suddenly crushing pressure of his hold. A face she did not recognize stared down at her, one twisted with anger — with hate. "You," he scarcely more than breathed, "are just like every. Body. Else." He moved so fast. Before she could register his words or the fact that she had once spoken them to him herself, he jerked her to one side. Isobel felt her feet part from the rocks. Weightlessness took hold of her as she swung out and over the ledge of the cliff. As he let her go. The wind whistled its high and lonely song in her ears. She fell away into the oblivion of the storm until she could no longer see the cliff — could no longer see him. Only the slip of the pink ribbon as it unraveled from her wrist, floating up and away from her and out of sight forever.

I thought about what I wanted to do now -- if I wanted to eat or leave the park, if I wanted to apply to grad school in the fall, if I wanted to find Ben in the crowd. Nothing sounded appealing, and I had the vague desire to slip through the cracks of what everyone else was doing.

Today Means Amen Dear you, whoever you are, however you got here, this is exactly where you are supposed to be. This moment has waited its whole life for you. This moment is your lover and you are a soldier. Come home, baby, it's over. You don't need to suffer anymore. Dear you, this moment is your surprise party. You are both hiding in the dark and walking through the door. This moment is a hallelujah. This moment is your permission slip to finally open that love letter you've been hiding from yourself, the one you wrote when you were little when you still danced like a sparkler at dusk. Do you remember the moment you realized they were watching? When you became ashamed of how much light you were holding? When you first learned how to unlove yourself? Dear you, the word today means amen in every language. Today, we made it. Today, I'm going to love you. Today, I'm going to love myself. Today, the boxcutter will rust in the garbage. The noose will forget how to hold you, today, today-- Dear you, and I have always meant you, nothing would be the same if you did not exist. You, whose voice is someone's favorite voice, someone's favorite face to wake up to. Nothing would be the same if you did not exist. You, the teacher, the starter's gun, the lantern in the night who offers not a way home, but the courage to travel farther into the dark. You, the lover, who worships the taste of her body, who is the largest tree ring in his heart, who does not let fear ration your love. You, the friend, the sacred chorus of how can I help. You, who have felt more numb than holy, more cracked than mosaic. Who have known the tiles of a bathroom by heart, who have forgotten what makes you worth it. You, the forgiven, the forgiver, who belongs right here in this moment. You, this clump of cells, this happy explosion that happened to start breathing, and by the grace of whatever is up there, you got here. You made it this whole way: through the nights that swallowed you whole, the mornings that arrived in pieces. The scabs, the gravel, the doubt, the hurt, the hurt, the hurt is over. Today, you made it. You made it. You made it here.

Wandering back into the bedroom, my gaze immediately strayed to the large bed along the wall and the lump beneath the covers. Pale light streamed through the half-open curtains, settling around the still-sleeping form of a Winter sidhe. Or a former Winter sidhe. Pausing in the doorframe, I took advantage of the serene moment just to watch him, a tiny flutter going through my stomach. Sometimes, it was still hard to believe that he was here, that this wasn’t a dream or a mirage or a figment of my imagination. That he was mine forever: my husband, my knight. My faery with a soul. He lay on his stomach, arms beneath the pillow, breathing peacefully, his dark hair falling over his eyes. The covers had slipped off his lean, muscular shoulders, and the early morning rays caressed his pale skin. Normally, I didn’t get to watch him sleep; he was usually up before me, in the courtyard sparring with Glitch or just prowling the halls of the castle. In the early days of our marriage, especially, I’d wake up in the middle of the night to find him gone, the hyper-awareness of his warrior days making it impossible for him to stay in one place, even to sleep. He’d grown up in the Unseelie Court, where you had to watch your back every second of every day, and centuries of fey survival could not be forgotten so easily. That paranoia would never really fade, but he was gradually starting to relax now, to the point where sometimes, though not often, I would wake with him still beside me, his arm curled around my waist. And given how rare it was, to see him truly unguarded and at ease, I hated to disturb him. But I walked across the room to the side of the bed and gently touched his shoulder. He was awake in an instant, silver eyes cracking open to meet mine, never failing to take my breath away. “Hey,” I greeted, smiling. “Sorry to wake you, but we have to be somewhere soon, remember?

Dear Daniel, How do you break up with your boyfriend in a way that tells him, "I don't want to sleep with you on a regular basis anymore, but please be available for late night booty calls if I run out of other options"? Lily Charlotte, NC Dear Lily, The story's so old you can't tell it anymore without everyone groaning, even your oldest friends with the last of their drinks shivering around the ice in their dirty glasses. The music playing is the same album everyone has. Those shoes, everybody has the same shoes on. It looked a little like rain so on person brought an umbrella, useless now in the starstruck clouded sky, forgotten on the way home, which is how the umbrella ended up in her place anyway. Everyone gets older on nights like this. And still it's a fresh slap in the face of everything you had going, that precarious shelf in the shallow closet that will certainly, certainly fall someday. Photographs slipping into a crack to be found by the next tenant, that one squinter third from the left laughing at something your roommate said, the coaster from that place in the city you used to live in, gone now. A letter that seemed important for reasons you can't remember, throw it out, the entry in the address book you won't erase but won't keep when you get a new phone, let it pass and don't worry about it. You don't think about them; "I haven't thought about them in forever," you would say if anybody brought it up, and nobody does." You think about them all the time. Close the book but forget to turn off the light, just sit staring in bed until you blink and you're out of it, some noise on the other side of the wall reminding you you're still here. That's it, that's everything. There's no statue in the town square with an inscription with words to live by. The actor got slapped this morning by someone she loved, slapped right across the face, but there's no trace of it on any channel no matter how late you watch. How many people--really, count them up--know where you are? How many will look after you when you don't show up? The churches and train stations are creaky and the street signs, the menus, the writing on the wall, it all feels like the wrong language. Nobody, nobody knows what you're thinking of when you lean your head against the wall. Put a sweater on when you get cold. Remind yourself, this is the night, because it is. You're free to sing what you want as you walk there, the trees rustling spookily and certainly and quietly and inimitably. Whatever shoes you want, fuck it, you're comfortable. Don't trust anyone's directions. Write what you might forget on the back of your hand, and slam down the cheap stuff and never mind the bad music from the window three floors up or what the boys shouted from the car nine years ago that keeps rattling around in your head, because you're here, you are, for the warmth of someone's wrists where the sleeve stops and the glove doesn't quite begin, and the slant of the voice on the punch line of the joke and the reflection of the moon in the water on the street as you stand still for a moment and gather your courage and take a breath before stealing away through the door. Look at it there. Take a good look. It looks like rain. Love, Daniel Handler

The Quiet One: invisible as an expelled breath and born halfway down the cracks through which he is destined to slip.

Sometimes I got so lost in the cynical side of life that remembering to feel extremely freaking lucky about certain things just slipped through the cracks.

It will be a long road, try not to slip through the cracks.

It was fear, realer than his heart beating in his chest. Fear that she was slipping through the cracks of his broken life, and fear that he loved her too much to stop her from going.

His vulnerability allowed me to let my guard down, and gently and methodically, he tore apart my well-constructed dam. Waves of tender feelings were lapping over the top and slipping through the cracks. The feelings flooded through and spilled into me. It was frightening opening myself up to feel love for someone again. My heart pounded hard and thudded audibly in my chest. I was sure he could hear it. Ren’s expression changed as he watched my face. His look of sadness was replaced by one of concern for me. What was the next step? What should I do? What do I say? How do I share what I’m feeling? I remembered watching romance movies with my mom, and our favorite saying was “shut up and kiss her already!” We’d both get frustrated when the hero or heroine wouldn’t do what was so obvious to the two of us, and as soon as a tense, romantic moment occurred, we’d both repeat our mantra. I could hear my mom’s humor-filled voice in my mind giving me the same advice: “Kells, shut up and kiss him already!” So, I got a grip on myself, and before I changed my mind, I leaned over and kissed him. He froze. He didn’t kiss me back. He didn’t push me away. He just stopped…moving. I pulled back, saw the shock on his face, and instantly regretted my boldness. I stood up and walked away, embarrassed. I wanted to put some distance between us as I frantically tried to rebuild the walls around my heart. I heard him move. He slid his hand under my elbow and turned me around. I couldn’t look at him. I just stared at his bare feet. He put a finger under my chin and tried to nudge my head up, but I still refused to meet his gaze. “Kelsey. Look at me.” Lifting my eyes, they traveled from his feet to a white button in the middle of his shirt. “Look at me.” My eyes continued their journey. They drifted past the golden-bronze skin of his chest, his throat, and then settled on his beautiful face. His cobalt blue eyes searched mine, questioning. He took a step closer. My breath hitched in my throat. Reaching out a hand, he slid it around my waist slowly. His other hand cupped my chin. Still watching my face, he placed his palm lightly on my cheek and traced the arch of my cheekbone with his thumb. The touch was sweet, hesitant, and careful, the way you might try to touch a frightened doe. His face was full of wonder and awareness. I quivered. He paused just a moment more, then smiled tenderly, dipped is head, and brushed his lips lightly against mine. He kissed me softly, tentatively, just a mere whisper of a kiss. His other hand slid down to my waist too. I timidly touched his arms with my fingertips. He was warm, and his skin was smooth. He gently pulled me closer and pressed me lightly against his chest. I gripped his arms. He sighed with pleasure, and deepened the kiss. I melted into him. How was I breathing? His summery sandalwood scent surrounded me. Everywhere he touched me, I felt tingly and alive. I clutched his arms fervently. His lips never leaving mine, Ren took both of my arms and wrapped them, one by one, around his neck. Then he trailed one of his hands down my bare arm to my waist while the other slid into my hair. Before I realized what he was planning to do, he picked me up with one arm and crushed me to his chest. I have no idea how long we kissed. It felt like a mere second, and it also felt like forever. My bare feet were dangling several inches from the floor. He was holding all my body weight easily with one arm. I buried my fingers into his hair and felt a rumble in his chest. It was similar to the purring sound he made as a tiger. After that, all coherent thought fled and time stopped.

my skin prickling from the strange, electric charge in the air. It was a thousand needles piercing my flesh, searching for a weakness. A crack. A doorway, however tiny, through which it could slip and jump-start my long-dead, long-cold heart.

I try not to think about how easily I slipped through a crack in the floor. It’s like, if you were walking down the street with your friends, and suddenly one of them slipped down an open manhole, you’d notice, wouldn’t you? I certainly would! I mean . . . I think I would. I hope I would. Or maybe we’re all so focused straight ahead, people slip away when we’re not looking.

You are not a hole in my heart, you are the whole of my heart." ... You said that when you met me, my eyes were dead. They were dead. I was dead. And if I lose you, they will be again. ... There's a darkness in me, Lorelai one I'm afraid will consume your light. But, God help me, I can't let you go." ... That isn't how light works, is it? Darkness is easily overcome. Not light. The smallest hint of illumination ... can slip through the most infinitesimal crack. It is never the other way around." Chapter 22, page 246.

We are all told from the very beginning that we are important. From the moment we can first understand words and perhaps even before then, we are continuously reassured that we have a place in things , that we have a part to play. The human race as a whole is a hopeful species. Of course there are exceptions. Some forgotten children, ones who slip through the cracks. And not everyone is told that they will be important in the same way. Not everyone will be a doctor, or a lawyer. Some people grow up believing that their importance is to love someone fully. Some people grow up believing that their importance is to be loved fully. Perhaps the reason my mailbox was always secret was that the people who visited it came to believe that keeping the secret was a piece of their importance. Maybe I was always given murders because they all thought that contributing to my legend was their importance. But we are all taught, in general, in some way, that someday our worth will be revealed. Someday we will be justified. Someday we will be free.

Because so much bullying and violence happens in our schools for the simple reason that school administrators refuse to enforce the rules. They refuse to enforce them because that’s what’s in their own professional interest under these politically correct discipline policies. Kids need adults to enforce rules. Behavior doesn’t magically get better when you decide to not punish mischief. What happens is that things get worse for students and teachers but look better on paper for bureaucrats and activists. This leads to a thousand tragedies a day that you’ll never hear about. And it lets troubled kids just slip through the cracks.

What's wrong with me? I lose my footing, in here.' He touched his head. 'When a neuro-typical looses their footing, they yell or escape to the TV, or maybe the doctor throws them on depression meds. But when I slip, I fall all the way through. I feel the ground give way and I'm gone. It's a crack -- a crack in what's real, and beneath there I'm stuck. Then, I guess I become someone else. Mom says I still know my name, but I walk a different world. The shrink calls it DID -- Dissociative Identity Disorder -- with a little added autism to spice up my other personality. I suppose he's right, but only I know how it feels to slip through the cracks. Then the monster shows up.

When love abandoned you, negative emotions easily slipped through the cracks of one’s broken soul to make us whole again.

because what if one day i slip? what if one day i fall through the cracks and no one is willing to pull me back? What happens to me then?

I don not know where the likeness went. It slipped through the cracks of time and went to where the lost things are.

It was the moths that first revealed the change. Grey-tipped whispers in the moonlit night. Two or three here, a single one there. White ones slipping through the darkness, silent and seemingly harmless, but present. Growing in numbers until they erupted the quiet like flutters of falling ash. There was a music in their silence. The kind of music that attached itself to hums and vibrations in the waters of the earth. The hums, the vibrations, all but imperceptible. With the dawn the moths vanished, leaving a broken land in their wake. The Elian River leaked out into fissures of streams and brooks that first appeared as watery cracks throughout the Faeran Valley. So small at first, we didn't recognize the difference. But as the months and years passed, the Elian slipped further and deeper into the growing fractures of earth the moths had left. Trails of watery branches and veins that broke the ground until it couldn't sustain life any longer. This is what we have against the Bremistans. The land is delicate now, brittle like old bones. And I fear it is aging beyond our ability to heal it....

In some way, she had always yearned for this, to slip through the final crack in the world. But she has a rope to teether her now, and walls that stood, and a foundation that was strong.

You need my help? What for? Bread, cash, a fake identity to help you slip sideways through the cracks? Tell me what you need, tell me why I should help, and I'll see what I can do. In memory of Elphaba. You knew her." Her head titled again, but up, this time, and it was to keep the sudden wetness from spilling into her carefully colored false eyelashes. "You knew my Elphie!

Will it be worth it, just for his hands on your skin? Will it be worth him slipping through your fingers, bleeding through the cracks in your constitution, just to be reminded you're the kind of person people leave? (p. 127)

I liked the way the boats looked, but I didn’t do anything about it. After a blowup with the feculent Times bloater—lying there on his waterbed playing the paper comb and drinking black rum—I flew up to Houston, Texas— don’t ask me why—and bought a touring bike. A bicycle, not a motorcycle. And I pedaled it to Los Angeles. The most terrible trip in the world. I mean Apsley Cherry-Garrard with Scott at the pole didn’t have a clue. I endured sandstorms, terrifying and lethal heat, thirst, freezing winds, trucks that tried to kill me, mechanical breakdowns, a Blue Norther, torrential downpours and floods, wolves, ranchers in single-engine planes dropping flour bombs. And Quoyle, the only thing that kept me going through all this was the thought of a little boat, a silent, sweet sailboat slipping through the cool water. It grew on me. I swore if I ever got off that fucking bicycle seat which was, by that time, welded into the crack of me arse, if ever I got pried off the thing I’d take to the sea and never leave her.

Everybody could attain this if he had the key. The key consists simply in becoming aware of one's "form of the Self or of one's skin, even though one may be asleep, in discovering the narrow crack through which consciousness slips between waking and deep sleep.

Hello! This is a book of bad ideas. At least, most of them are bad ideas. It’s possible some good ones slipped through the cracks. If so, I apologize. Some ideas that sound ridiculous turn out to be revolutionary. Smearing mold on an infected cut sounds like a terrible idea, but the discovery

The closer you get to true happiness, the more you fear it,’ he said. ‘It’s a fear that slips quietly through the cracks, that lies in wait for those weaker moments before it pounces. It’s the what ifs while you wait in the dark… What if it all goes wrong? What if you lose it all?’ Wilder went rigid where he stood, his worst fears coming to life in Torj’s words. The Bear Slayer gripped his shoulder, hard, bringing him back to the present. ‘But my brother, those are not the questions you need to ask. Not today, not now. Instead, ask yourself: what if you got everything you ever wanted?

I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel as I looked around the empty lot. I wavered on getting out when a giant lightning bolt painted a jagged streak across the rainy lavender-gray sky. Minutes passed and still he didn’t come out of the Three Hundreds’ building. Damn it. Before I could talk myself out of it, I jumped out of the car, cursing at myself for not carrying an umbrella for about the billionth time and for not having waterproof shoes, and ran through the parking lot, straight through the double doors. As I stomped my feet on the mat, I looked around the lobby for the big guy. A woman behind the front desk raised her eyebrows at me curiously. “Can I help you with something?” she asked. “Have you seen Aiden?” “Aiden?” Were there really that many Aidens? “Graves.” “Can I ask what you need him for?” I bit the inside of my cheek and smiled at the woman who didn’t know me and, therefore, didn’t have an idea that I knew Aiden. “I’m here to pick him up.” It was obvious she didn’t know what to make of me. I didn’t exactly look like pro-football player girlfriend material in that moment, much less anything else. I’d opted not to put on any makeup since I hadn’t planned on leaving the house. Or real pants. Or even a shirt with the sleeves intact. I had cut-off shorts and a baggy T-shirt with sleeves that I’d taken scissors to. Plus the rain outside hadn’t done my hair any justice. It looked like a cloud of teal. Then there was the whole we-don’t-look-anything-alike thing going on, so there was no way we could pass as siblings. Just as I opened my mouth, the doors that connected the front area with the rest of the training facility swung open. The man I was looking for came out with his bag over his shoulder, imposing, massive, and sweaty. Definitely surly too, which really only meant he looked the way he always did. I couldn’t help but crack a little smile at his grumpiness. “Ready?” He did his form of a nod, a tip of his chin. I could feel the receptionist’s eyes on us as he approached, but I was too busy taking in Grumpy Pants to bother looking at anyone else. Those brown eyes shifted to me for a second, and that time, I smirked uncontrollably. He glared down at me. “What are you smiling at?” I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head, trying to give him an innocent look. “Oh, nothing, sunshine.” He mouthed ‘sunshine’ as his gaze strayed to the ceiling. We ran out of the building side by side toward my car. Throwing the doors open, I pretty much jumped inside and shivered, turning the car and the heater on. Aiden slid in a lot more gracefully than I had, wet but not nearly as soaked. He eyed me as he buckled in, and I slanted him a look. “What?” With a shake of his head, he unzipped his duffel, which was sitting on his lap, and pulled out that infamous off-black hoodie he always wore. Then he held it out. All I could do was stare at it for a second. His beloved, no-name brand, extra-extra-large hoodie. He was offering it to me. When I first started working for Aiden, I remembered him specifically giving me instructions on how he wanted it washed and dried. On gentle and hung to dry. He loved that thing. He could own a thousand just like it, but he didn’t. He had one black hoodie that he wore all the time and a blue one he occasionally donned. “For me?” I asked like an idiot. He shook it, rolling his eyes. “Yes for you. Put it on before you get sick. I would rather not have to take care of you if you get pneumonia.” Yeah, I was going to ignore his put-out tone and focus on the ‘rather not’ as I took it from him and slipped it on without another word. His hoodie was like holding a gold medal in my hands. Like being given something cherished, a family relic. Aiden’s precious.

Sam chose her next words carefully—“I hear she’s very clever.” What she’d actually heard was that Dr. Helena Moriarty, when faced with a man who wouldn’t stop harassing her, had taken up beekeeping, distilled the queen bee’s scent, and slipped it into the offending man’s shaving cream. After that, bees had swarmed him—impossibly finding him no matter where he went, wriggling and squirming through cracks and keyholes, air vents, and chimneys. It was enough to drive a man mad. They just want to be friends, Dr. Moriarty was said to have echoed back at him. For indeed, he was only stung two or three times. Needless to say, he’d left her alone after that.

How happy you make me, Jack," said Stephen. "And you might make me even happier, should you so wish, by giving me a hand with this. The unreasonable attitude, or lurch, of the ship caused me to overset the chest." "God help us," cried Jack, gazing at the mass of gold coins lying in a deep curve along the leeward side of the cabin. "What is this?" "It is technically known as money," said Stephen. "And was you to help me pick it up, instead of leering upon it with a stunned concupiscence more worthy of Danae than a king's officer, we might conceivably save some few pieces before they all slip through the cracks in the floor. Come, come, bear a hand, there.

You see, doors are many things: fissures and cracks, ways between, mysteries and borders. But more than anything else, doors are change. When things slip through them, no matter how small or brief, change trails them like porpoises following a ship’s wake. The change had already taken hold of Adelaide Lee, and she could not turn away.

We are swapping band-aid education for brand new education, sealing the cracks – all the holes in the broken-down fences of Australian education policy for Indigenous peoples. Yes, they continued the better education, we know what is best rhetoric in their on-going war with the sceptic observer whom they continually accused was pass em this and not pass em that – always out to destroy Aboriginal people like a record still stuck in the same grove. Anyway. Whatever. Agree or not. This was the hammer, even in officially recognised Aboriginal Government, pulping confidence. The hammer that knocked away the small gains through any slip of vigilance. The faulty hammer that created weak ladders to heaven.

Look, even with a team of a hundred, or a thousand, moderators, or if Emil’s algorithm actually worked with 99.9 percent accuracy, we still wouldn’t be able to catch everything. And every time something slips through the cracks, we’re going to get called out on it, no matter how hard we try. People are always going to find new ways to be terrible and cruel.

least.” “I don’t remember you complaining.” “Yes, well, I’d only been fantasizing about it for ages.” “See, there’s a thing,” Alex points out. “You just told me that. You can tell me other stuff.” “It’s hardly the same.” He rolls over onto his stomach, considers, and very deliberately says, “Baby.” It’s become a thing: baby. He knows it’s become a thing. He’s slipped up and accidentally said it a few times, and each time, Henry positively melts and Alex pretends not to notice, but he’s not above playing dirty here. There’s a slow hiss of an exhale across the line, like air escaping through a crack in a window. “It’s, ah. It’s not the best time,” he says. “How did you put it? Nutso family stuff.” Alex purses his lips, bites down on his cheek. There it is. He’s wondered when Henry would finally start talking about the royal family. He makes oblique references to Philip being wound so tight as to double as an atomic clock, or to his grandmother’s disapproval, and he mentions Bea as often as Alex mentions June, but Alex knows there’s more to it than that. He couldn’t tell you when he started noticing, though, just like he doesn’t know when he started ticking off the days of Henry’s moods. “Ah,” he says. “I see.” “I don’t suppose you keep up with any British tabloids, do you?” “Not if I can help it.” Henry offers the bitterest of laughs. “Well, the Daily Mail has always had a bit of an affinity for airing our dirty laundry. They, er, they gave my sister this nickname years ago. ‘The Powder Princess.’” A ding of recognition. “Because of the…” “Yes, the cocaine, Alex.” “Okay, that does sound familiar.” Henry sighs. “Well, someone’s managed to bypass security to spray paint ‘Powder Princess’ on the side of her car.” “Shit,” Alex says. “And she’s not taking it well?” “Bea?” Henry laughs, a little more genuinely this time. “No, she doesn’t usually care about those things. She’s fine. More shaken up that someone got past security than anything.

But sometimes, and don't you forget this, boy, you can get fooled, there's more gators lying around than you figured on. You can get yourself trapped, like in one of them box canyons. Most of the time you've got to turn around, fight your way out. But sometimes, boy, you get lucky. You find a crack just big enough to slip through, you're out the other side. That's where I am, boy, I'm out the other side.

Will it be worth it, just for his hands on your skin? Will it be worth him slipping through your fingers, bleeding through the cracks in your constitution, just to be reminded you're the kind of person people leave? Maybe it will, because look at his mouth, look at the shape if makes when his eyes are on you. You wouldn't make love with him, you'd make art. Maybe that would be worth it, but still, art is tragedy. Art is loss. (p. 127)

It doesn’t knock. Doesn’t bloom like it used to. Just shows up in the way someone remembers how you take your tea. In a song that doesn’t ache anymore. It slips between the cracks of the day in the quiet of forgotten habits, in hands that don’t flinch when reaching for yours. Love returns slowly. In mismatched mugs, and the softness of being asked if you’ve slept. In laughter that feels like rinsed linen clean, familiar, light. It’s a slow thing, like the light that finds its way through closed blinds.

The sun eventually rises, its light slipping through the cracks and illuminating Peeta’s face. Who will he transform into if we make it home? This perplexing, good-natured boy who can spin out lies so convincingly the whole of Panem believes him to be hopelessly in love with me, and I’ll admit it, there are moments when he makes me believe it myself? At least, we’ll be friends, I think. Nothing will change the fact that we’ve saved each other’s lives in here. And beyond that, he will always be the boy with the bread. Good friends. Anything beyond that though . . . and I feel Gale’s gray eyes watching me watching Peeta, all the way from District 12.

I hope they understand, my sons, both now and in the future just materializing in the dark, that all these hours their mother has been walking so swiftly away from them I have not been gone, that my spirit, hours ago, slipped back into the house and crept into the room where their early-rising father had already fallen asleep, usually before eight p.m., and that I touched this gentle man whom I love so desperately and somehow fear so much, touched him on the pulse in his temple and felt his dreams, which are too distant for the likes of me; and I climbed the creaking old stairs and at the top split in two, and heading into the boys’ separate rooms, I slid through the crack under the doors and curled myself on the pillows to breathe into me the breath that my children breathed out. Every pause between the end of one breath and the beginning of the next is long; then again, nothing is not always in transition. Soon, tomorrow, the boys will be men, then the men will leave the house, and my husband and I will look at each other crouching under the weight of all that we wouldn’t or couldn’t yell, as well as all those hours outside walking together, my body, my shadow, and the moon. It is terribly true, even if the truth does not comfort, that if you look at the moon for long enough night after night, as I have, you will see that the old cartoons are correct, that the moon is, in fact, laughing. But it is not laughing at us, we lonely humans, who are far too small and our lives far too fleeting for it to give us any notice at all.

The law school notions about the virtue of the adversarial system, of the system’s checks and balances, of the search for truth, had long since eroded like the faces of statues from other civilizations. The law was not about truth. It was about negotiation, amelioration, manipulation. I didn't deal in guilt and innocence, because everybody was guilty. Of something. But it didn't matter, because every case I took on was a house built on a foundation poured by overworked and underpaid laborers. They cut corners. They made mistakes. And then they painted over the mistakes with lies. My job was to peel away the paint and find the cracks. To work my fingers and tools into those cracks and widen them. To make them so big that either the house fell down or, failing that, my client slipped through.

Lynum had plenty of information to share. The FBI's files on Mario Savio, the brilliant philosophy student who was the spokesman for the Free Speech Movement, were especially detailed. Savio had a debilitating stutter when speaking to people in small groups, but when standing before a crowd and condemning his administration's latest injustice he spoke with divine fire. His words had inspired students to stage what was the largest campus protest in American history. Newspapers and magazines depicted him as the archetypal "angry young man," and it was true that he embodied a student movement fueled by anger at injustice, impatience for change, and a burning desire for personal freedom. Hoover ordered his agents to gather intelligence they could use to ruin his reputation or otherwise "neutralize" him, impatiently ordering them to expedite their efforts. Hoover's agents had also compiled a bulging dossier on the man Savio saw as his enemy: Clark Kerr. As campus dissent mounted, Hoover came to blame the university president more than anyone else for not putting an end to it. Kerr had led UC to new academic heights, and he had played a key role in establishing the system that guaranteed all Californians access to higher education, a model adopted nationally and internationally. But in Hoover's eyes, Kerr confused academic freedom with academic license, coddled Communist faculty members, and failed to crack down on "young punks" like Savio. Hoover directed his agents to undermine the esteemed educator in myriad ways. He wanted Kerr removed from his post as university president. As he bluntly put it in a memo to his top aides, Kerr was "no good." Reagan listened intently to Lynum's presentation, but he wanted more--much more. He asked for additional information on Kerr, for reports on liberal members of the Board of Regents who might oppose his policies, and for intelligence reports about any upcoming student protests. Just the week before, he had proposed charging tuition for the first time in the university's history, setting off a new wave of protests up and down the state. He told Lynum he feared subversives and liberals would attempt to misrepresent his efforts to establish fiscal responsibility, and that he hoped the FBI would share information about any upcoming demonstrations against him, whether on campus or at his press conferences. It was Reagan's fear, according to Lynum's subsequent report, "that some of his press conferences could be stacked with 'left wingers' who might make an attempt to embarrass him and the state government." Lynum said he understood his concerns, but following Hoover's instructions he made no promises. Then he and Harter wished the ailing governor a speedy recovery, departed the mansion, slipped into their dark four-door Ford, and drove back to the San Francisco field office, where Lynum sent an urgent report to the director. The bedside meeting was extraordinary, but so was the relationship between Reagan and Hoover. It had begun decades earlier, when the actor became an informer in the FBI's investigation of Hollywood Communists. When Reagan was elected president of the Screen Actors Guild, he secretly continued to help the FBI purge fellow actors from the union's rolls. Reagan's informing proved helpful to the House Un-American Activities Committee as well, since the bureau covertly passed along information that could help HUAC hold the hearings that wracked Hollywood and led to the blacklisting and ruin of many people in the film industry. Reagan took great satisfaction from his work with the FBI, which gave him a sense of security and mission during a period when his marriage to Jane Wyman was failing, his acting career faltering, and his faith in the Democratic Party of his father crumbling. In the following years, Reagan and FBI officials courted each other through a series of confidential contacts. (7-8)

The same song was playing the second I met my ex–best friend and the moment I realized I’d lost her. I met my best friend at a neighborhood cookout the year we would both turn twelve. It was one of those hot Brooklyn afternoons that always made me feel like I'd stepped out of my life and onto a movie set because the hydrants were open, splashing water all over the hot asphalt. There wasn't a cloud in the flawless blue sky. And pretty black and brown people were everywhere. I was crying. ‘What a Wonderful World’ was playing through a speaker someone had brought with them to the park, and it reminded me too much of my Granny Georgina. I was cupping the last snow globe she’d ever given me in my small, sweaty hands and despite the heat, I couldn’t help imagining myself inside the tiny, perfect, snow-filled world. I was telling myself a story about what it might be like to live in London, a place that was unimaginably far and sitting in the palm of my hands all at once. But it wasn't working. When Gigi had told me stories, they'd felt like miracles. But she was gone and I didn't know if I'd ever be okay again. I heard a small voice behind me, asking if I was okay. I had noticed a girl watching me, but it took her a long time to come over, and even longer to say anything. She asked the question quietly. I had never met anyone who…spoke the way that she did, and I thought that her speech might have been why she waited so long to speak to me. While I expected her to say ‘What’s wrong?’—a question I didn’t want to have to answer—she asked ‘What are you doing?’ instead, and I was glad. “I was kind of a weird kid, so when I answered, I said ‘Spinning stories,’ calling it what Gigi had always called it when I got lost in my own head, but my voice cracked on the phrase and another tear slipped down my cheek. To this day I don’t know why I picked that moment to be so honest. Usually when kids I didn't know came up to me, I clamped my mouth shut like the heavy cover of an old book falling closed. Because time and taught me that kids weren't kind to girls like me: Girls who were dreamy and moony-eyed and a little too nice. Girls who wore rose-tonted glasses. And actual, really thick glasses. Girls who thought the world was beautiful, and who read too many books, and who never saw cruelty coming. But something about this girl felt safe. Something about the way she was smiling as she stuttered out the question helped me know I needn't bother with being shy, because she was being so brave. I thought that maybe kids weren't nice to girls like her either. The cookout was crowded, and none of the other kids were talking to me because, like I said, I was the neighborhood weirdo. I carried around snow globesbecause I was in love with every place I’d never been. I often recited Shakespeare from memory because of my dad, who is a librarian. I lost myself in books because they were friends who never letme down, and I didn’t hide enough of myself the way everyone else did, so people didn’t ‘get’ me. I was lonely a lot. Unless I was with my Gigi. The girl, she asked me if it was making me feel better, spinning the stories. And I shook my head. Before I could say what I was thinking—a line from Hamlet about sorrow coming in battalions that would have surely killed any potential I had of making friends with her. The girl tossed her wavy black hair over her shoulder and grinned. She closed her eyes and said 'Music helps me. And I love this song.' When she started singing, her voice was so unexpected—so bright and clear—that I stopped crying and stared at her. She told me her name and hooked her arm through mine like we’d known each other forever, and when the next song started, she pulled me up and we spun in a slow circle together until we were both dizzy and giggling.

I saw the Tracker—but that’s wrong, really. I saw right to where the tracking thing was. I saw those winnowing tentacles come out again, and the front figure pause, and then—it’s the only word that actually describes it—ooze on again on its via dolorosa. And at that the hind figure seemed to summon all its strength. It seemed to open out a fringe of arms or tentacles, a sort of corona of black rays spread out. It gaped with a full expansion, and even I could feel that there was a perfectly horrible attraction, or vacuum drag, being exerted. That was horrible enough, with the face of the super-suffering man now almost under me resonating my own terror. But the worst thing was that, as the tentacles unwrapped and winnowed out toward their prey, I saw they weren’t really tentacles at all. They were spreading cracks, veins, fissures, rents of darkness expanding from a void, a gap of pure blackness. There’s only one way to say it—one was seeing right through the solid world into a gap, an ultimate maelstrom. And from it was spreading out a—I can only call it so—a negative sunrise of black radiation that would deluge and obliterate everything. Of course it was still only a fissure, a vent, but one realized—This is a hole, a widening hole, that has been pierced in the dike that defends the common-sense, sensuous world. Through this vortex-hole that is rapidly opening, over this lip and brink, everything could slip, fall in, find no purchase, be swallowed up. It was like watching a crumbling cliff with survivors clinging to it being undercut and toppling into a black tide that had swallowed up its base. This negative force could drag the solidest things from their base, melt them, engulf the whole hard, visible world. And we were right on that brink. What was after us, for I knew now I was in its field, was not a thing of any passions or desires. Those are limited things, satiable things—in a way, balanced things, and so familiar, safe even, almost friendly in comparison with this. You know the grim saying, “You can give a sop to Cerberus, but not to his Master.” No, this was—that’s the technical term, I found, coined by those who have been up against this and come back alive—this was absolute Deprivation, really insatiable need, need that nothing can satisfy, absolute refusal to give, to yield. It is the second strongest thing in the universe, and, indeed, outside that. It could swallow the whole universe, and the universe would go for nothing, because in that gap the whole universe could fill not a bit of it. It would remain as empty, as gaping, as insatiable as ever, for it is the bottomless pit made by unstanchable Lack.

It wasn’t until she had almost reached its lights that she heard another rider in the hills behind her. Ice slid down Kestrel’s spine. Fear, that the rider was Arin. Fear, at her sudden hope that it was. She pulled Javelin to a stop and swung to the ground. Better to go on foot through the narrow streets to the harbor. Stealth was more important now than speed. Beating hooves echoed in the hills. Closer. She hugged Javelin hard around the neck, then pushed him away while she still could bear to do it. She slapped his rump in an order to head home. Whether he’d go to her villa or Arin’s, she couldn’t say. But he left, and might draw the other rider after him if she was indeed being pursued. She slipped into the city shadows. And it was magic. It was as if the Herrani gods had turned on their own people. No one noticed Kestrel skulking along walls or heard her cracking the thin ice of a puddle. No late-night wanderer looked in her face and saw a Valorian. No one saw the general’s daughter. Kestrel made it to the harbor, down to the docks. Where Arin waited. His breath heaved white clouds into the air. His hair was black with sweat. It hadn’t mattered that Kestrel had been ahead of him on the horse path. Arin had been able to run openly through the city while she had crept through alleys. Their eyes met, and Kestrel felt utterly defenseless. But she had a weapon. He didn’t, not that she could see. Her hand instinctively fell to her knife’s jagged edge. Arin saw. Kestrel wasn’t sure what came first: his quick hurt, so plain and sharp, or her certainty--equally plain, equally sharp--that she could never draw a weapon on him. He straightened from his runner’s crouch. His expression changed. Until it did, Kestrel hadn’t perceived the desperate set of his mouth. She hadn’t recognized the wordless plea until it was gone, and his face aged with something sad. Resigned. Arin glanced away. When he looked back it was as if Kestrel were part of the pier beneath her feet. A sail stitched to a ship. A black current of water. As if she were not there at all. He turned away, walked into the illuminated house of the new Herrani harbormaster, and shut the door behind him. For a moment Kestrel couldn’t move. Then she ran for a fishing boat docked far enough from its fellows that she might cast off from shore unnoticed by an sailors on the other vessels. She leaped onto the deck and took rapid stock of the boat. The tiny cabin was bare of supplies. As she lifted the anchor and uncoiled the rope tethering the boat to its dock, she knew, even if she couldn’t see, that Arin was talking with the harbormaster, distracting him while Kestrel prepared to set sail.

ELEKTRA: If this is all you were, Orestes, how could your memory fill my memory, how is it your soul fills my soul?.... Look! You are nothing at all. Just a crack where the light slipped through. Oh, my child, I thought I could save you. I thought I could send you beyond. But there is not beyond. .....somewhere, I don't know where - suddenly alone you stopped - where death was. You stopped. And I would have waited and washed you and lifted you up from the fire like a whitened coal. ....Into your child's fingers I put the earth and the sky. No mother did that for you. No nurse. No slave. I. Your sister, without letting go, day after day, year after year, and you my own sweet child. But death was a wind too strong for that. One day three people vanished. Father. You. Me. Gone. Now our enemies rock with laughter. And she runs mad for joy - that creature in the shape of your mother - how often you said you would come one secret evening and cut her throat! But our luck canceled that, whatever luck is. And instead my beloved, luck sent you back to me colder than ashes, later than shadows. ....Oh, my love, take me there. Let me dwell where you are. I am already nothing. I am already burning. Oh, my love, I was once part of you - take me too! Only void is between us. And I see that the dead feel no pain. (Elektra, by Sophocles)

Apologia Pro Poemate Meo" I, too, saw God through mud— The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled. War brought more glory to their eyes than blood, And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child. Merry it was to laugh there— Where death becomes absurd and life absurder. For power was on us as we slashed bones bare Not to feel sickness or remorse of murder. I, too, have dropped off fear— Behind the barrage, dead as my platoon, And sailed my spirit surging, light and clear Past the entanglement where hopes lay strewn; And witnessed exultation— Faces that used to curse me, scowl for scowl, Shine and lift up with passion of oblation, Seraphic for an hour; though they were foul. I have made fellowships— Untold of happy lovers in old song. For love is not the binding of fair lips With the soft silk of eyes that look and long, But Joy, whose ribbon slips,— But wound with war’s hard wire whose stakes are strong; Bound with the bandage of the arm that drips; Knit in the welding of the rifle-thong. I have perceived much beauty In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight; Heard music in the silentness of duty; Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate. Nevertheless, except you share With them in hell the sorrowful dark of hell, Whose world is but the trembling of a flare, And heaven but as the highway for a shell, You shall not hear their mirth: You shall not come to think them well content By any jest of mine. These men are worth Your tears: You are not worth their merriment.

Apologia Pro Poemate Meo" " I, too, saw God through mud— The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled. War brought more glory to their eyes than blood, And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child. Merry it was to laugh there— Where death becomes absurd and life absurder. For power was on us as we slashed bones bare Not to feel sickness or remorse of murder. I, too, have dropped off fear— Behind the barrage, dead as my platoon, And sailed my spirit surging, light and clear Past the entanglement where hopes lay strewn; And witnessed exultation— Faces that used to curse me, scowl for scowl, Shine and lift up with passion of oblation, Seraphic for an hour; though they were foul. I have made fellowships— Untold of happy lovers in old song. For love is not the binding of fair lips With the soft silk of eyes that look and long, But Joy, whose ribbon slips,— But wound with war’s hard wire whose stakes are strong; Bound with the bandage of the arm that drips; Knit in the welding of the rifle-thong. I have perceived much beauty In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight; Heard music in the silentness of duty; Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate. Nevertheless, except you share With them in hell the sorrowful dark of hell, Whose world is but the trembling of a flare, And heaven but as the highway for a shell, You shall not hear their mirth: You shall not come to think them well content By any jest of mine. These men are worth Your tears: You are not worth their merriment.

New trout, having never seen rain on the river, rise eagerly to ripples on the Mink. Some windows close against the moist and some open for the music. Rain slips and slides along hawsers and chains and ropes and cables and gladdens the cells of mosses and weighs down the wings of moths. It maketh the willow shiver its fingers and thrums on doors of dens in the fens. It falls on hats and cats and trucks and ducks and cars and bars and clover and plover. It grayeth the sand on the beach and fills thousands of flowers to the brim. It thrills worms and depresses damselflies. Slides down every window rilling and murmuring. Wakes the ancient mud and mutter of the swamp, which has been cracked and hard for months. Falls gently on leeks and creeks and bills and rills and the last shriveled blackberries like tiny dried purple brains on the bristles of bushes. On the young bear trundling through a copse of oaks in the woods snorffling up acorns. On ferns and fawns, cubs and kits, sheds and redds. On salmon as long as your arm thrashing and roiling in the river. On roof and hoof, doe and hoe, fox and fence, duck and muck. On a slight man in a yellow slicker crouched by the river with his recording equipment all covered against the rain with plastic wrap from the grocery store and after he figures out how to get the plastic from making crinkling sounds when he turns the machine on he settles himself in a little bed of ferns and says to the crow huddled patiently in rain, okay, now, here we go, Oral History Project, what the rain says to the river as the wet season opens, project number …something or other … where’s the fecking start button? …I can’t see anything … can you see a green light? yes? is it on? damn my eyes … okay! there it is! it’s working! rain and the river! here we go!

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

You should have gone with them,” she said, lifting her chin to look at Taristan. The smoke grew so thick she could hardly see him through the shadows, the strange realm burning around them. But she could still feel his arms, wrapped around her as they were, holding them both together until some kind of ending came. “To what?” he answered, his voice raspy with smoke. Erida heaved another choking breath, the heat of the flames buffeting her back. Tears slipped from her eyes and Erida curled into him, as if she might disappear into Taristan entirely. “To anything but this,” she cried out, looking back to where the Spindle used to be. “There is nothing for you here.” Taristan only stared. “Yes, there is.” The fires spread, so close now Erida feared her armor might melt off her body. But there was nowhere to go, nothing to do. They had no blade. They had no doorways. There was only Taristan in front of her, the long years of his life welling up in his eyes. She knew them as much as anyone could. An orphan, a mercenary, a prince. A discarded child ripe for the picking, set on this terrible path for so terribly long. Did it always lead here? she wondered. Has this always been our fate? The steps shuddered behind her, one of them crumbling entirely. What Waits hissed with the cracking stone, closer by the second. The demon within called to the demon without, the two of them connected like a piece of rope pulling taut. Erida swallowed against the sensation, feeling her control slip. She gripped Taristan tighter, blinking fiercely. My mind is my own. My mind is my own. But her own voice began to fade, even in her head. She saw the same in Taristan, the same war raging behind his eyes. Before it could seize them both, Erida seized her prince by the neck, pulling his face to her own. He tasted like blood and smoke, but she reveled in it. “Does this make you mine?” Taristan whispered, his hand against her jaw. It was the same question he once asked so long ago, when Erida could give no answer. It felt foolish now, a stupid thing to hesitate over. Especially as another took over her head, conquering her mind as she tried to conquer the world. “Yes,” she answered, kissing him again. Kissing him until the flames pressed in, until she couldn’t breathe. Until her vision went black. Until the first footstep landed on the grass, the dirt going to ashes, beneath Him, and all the realms shook with the weight of it.

The Man-Moth Man-Moth: Newspaper misprint for “mammoth.” Here, above, cracks in the buildings are filled with battered moonlight. The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat. It lies at his feet like a circle for a doll to stand on, and he makes an inverted pin, the point magnetized to the moon. He does not see the moon; he observes only her vast properties, feeling the queer light on his hands, neither warm nor cold, of a temperature impossible to record in thermometers. But when the Man-Moth pays his rare, although occasional, visits to the surface, the moon looks rather different to him. He emerges from an opening under the edge of one of the sidewalks and nervously begins to scale the faces of the buildings. He thinks the moon is a small hole at the top of the sky, proving the sky quite useless for protection. He trembles, but must investigate as high as he can climb. Up the façades, his shadow dragging like a photographer’s cloth behind him he climbs fearfully, thinking that this time he will manage to push his small head through that round clean opening and be forced through, as from a tube, in black scrolls on the light. (Man, standing below him, has no such illusions.) But what the Man-Moth fears most he must do, although he fails, of course, and falls back scared but quite unhurt. Then he returns to the pale subways of cement he calls his home. He flits, he flutters, and cannot get aboard the silent trains fast enough to suit him. The doors close swiftly. The Man-Moth always seats himself facing the wrong way and the train starts at once at its full, terrible speed, without a shift in gears or a gradation of any sort. He cannot tell the rate at which he travels backwards. Each night he must be carried through artificial tunnels and dream recurrent dreams. Just as the ties recur beneath his train, these underlie his rushing brain. He does not dare look out the window, for the third rail, the unbroken draught of poison, runs there beside him. He regards it as a disease he has inherited the susceptibility to. He has to keep his hands in his pockets, as others must wear mufflers. If you catch him, hold up a flashlight to his eye. It’s all dark pupil, an entire night itself, whose haired horizon tightens as he stares back, and closes up the eye. Then from the lids one tear, his only possession, like the bee’s sting, slips. Slyly he palms it, and if you’re not paying attention he’ll swallow it. However, if you watch, he’ll hand it over, cool as from underground springs and pure enough to drink.

I cast my gangly body into the shadow of the stable and watched them, curious to see my uncle with a triumphant smile on his mouth. He called for Jedha, the Master-at-Arms, and they spoke in low, swift voices before turning in to the house. I stayed in the shadows and trailed them through the hall into the mahogany library, the wooden doors left slightly ajar. I can’t remember what they said to one another—how my uncle had gotten the Providence Card away from the highwaymen—only that they were consumed with excitement. I waited for them to leave, my uncle fool enough not to lock the Card away, and I stole into the heart of the room. Writ on the top of the Card were two words: The Nightmare. My mouth opened, my childish eyes round. I knew enough of The Old Book of Alders to know this particular Providence Card was one of only two of its kind, its magic formidable, fearsome. Use it, and one had the power to speak into the minds of others. Use it too long, and the Card would reveal one’s darkest fears. But it wasn’t the Card’s reputation that ensnared me—it was the monster. I stood over the desk, unable to tear my eyes away from the ghastly creature depicted on the Card’s face. Its fur was coarse, traveling across its limbs and down its hunched spine to the top of its bristled tail. Its fingers were eerily long, hairless and gray, tipped by great, vicious claws. Its face was neither man nor beast, but something in between. I leaned closer to the Card, drawn by the creature’s snarl, its teeth jagged beneath a curled lip. Its eyes captured me. Yellow, bright as a torch, slit by long, catlike pupils. The creature stared up at me, unmoving, unblinking, and though it was made of ink and paper, I could not shake the feeling it was watching me as intently as I was watching it. Trying to grasp what happened next was like mending a shattered mirror. Even if I could realign the pieces, cracks in my memory still remained. All I’m certain of was the feel of the burgundy velvet—the unbelievable softness along the ridges of the Nightmare Card as my finger slipped across it. I remember the smell of salt and the white-hot pain that followed. I must have fallen or fainted, because it was dark outside when I awoke on the library floor. The hair on the back of my neck bristled, and when I sat up, I was somehow aware I was no longer alone in the library. That’s when I first heard it, the sound of those long, vicious claws tapping together. Click. Click. Click. I jumped to my feet, searching the library for an intruder. But I was alone. It wasn’t until it happened again—click, click, click—that I realized the library was empty. The intruder was in my mind.

The first time Christina and Lachlan Meet ...Christina wasn't about to stop fighting—not until she took her last breath. Boring down with her heels, she thrashed. "Get off me, ye brute." She would hold her son in her arms this day if it was the last thing she did. And by the shift of the crushing weight on her chest, she only had moments before her life's breath completely whooshed from her lungs. The very thought of dying whilst her son was still held captive infused her with strength. With a jab, she slammed the heel of her hand across the man's chin. He flew from her body like a sack of grain. Praises be, had the Lord granted her with superhuman strength? Blinking, Christina sat up. No, no. Her strike hadn't rescued her from the pillager. A champion had. A behemoth of a man pummeled the pikeman's face with his fists. "Never. Ever." His fists moved so fast they blurred. "Harm. A. Woman!" Bloodied and battered, the varlet dropped to the dirt. A swordsman attacked her savior from behind. "Watch out," she cried, but before the words left her lips the warrior spun to his feet. Flinging his arm backward, he grabbed his assailant's wrist, stopped the sword midair and flipped the cur onto his back. Onward, he fought a rush of English attackers with his bare hands, without armor. Not even William Wallace himself had been so talented. This warrior moved like a cat, anticipating his opponent's moves before they happened. Five enemy soldiers lay on their backs. "Quickly," the man shouted, running toward her, his feet bare. No sooner had she rolled to her knees than his powerful arms clamped around her. The wind whipped beneath her feet. He planted her bum in the saddle. "Behind!" Christina screamed, every muscle in her body clenching taut. Throwing back an elbow, the man smacked an enemy soldier in the face resulting in a sickening crack. She picked up her reins and dug in her heels. "Whoa!" The big man latched onto the skirt of her saddle and hopped behind her, making her pony's rear end dip. But the frightened galloway didn't need coaxing. He galloped away from the fight like a deer running from a fox. Christina peered around her shoulder at the mass of fighting men behind them. "My son!" "Do you see him?" the man asked in the strangest accent she'd ever heard. She tried to turn back, but the man's steely chest stopped her. "They took him." "Who?" "The English, of course." The more they talked, the further from the border the galloway took them. "Huh?" the man mumbled behind her like he'd been struck in the head by a hammer. Everyone for miles knew the Scots and the English were to exchange a prisoner that day. The champion's big palm slipped around her waist and held on—it didn't hurt like he was digging in his fingers, but he pressed firm against her. The sensation of such a powerful hand on her body was unnerving. It had been eons since any man had touched her, at least gently. The truth? Aside from the brutish attack moments ago, Christina's life had been nothing but chaste. White foam leached from the pony's neck and he took in thunderous snorts. He wouldn't be able to keep this pace much longer. Christina steered him through a copse of trees and up the crag where just that morning she'd stood with King Robert and Sir Boyd before they'd led the Scottish battalion into the valley. There, she could gain a good vantage point and try to determine where the backstabbing English were heading with Andrew this time. At the crest of the outcropping, she pulled the horse to a halt. "The pony cannot keep going at this pace." The man's eyebrows slanted inward and he gave her a quizzical stare. Good Lord, his tempest-blue eyes pierced straight through her soul. "Are you speaking English?

Reader's Digest (Reader's Digest USA) - Clip This Article on Location 56 | Added on Friday, May 16, 2014 12:06:55 AM Words of Lasting Interest Looking Out for The Lonely One teacher’s strategy to stop violence at its root BY GLENNON DOYLE MELTON  FROM MOMASTERY.COM PHOTOGRAPH BY DAN WINTERS A few weeks ago, I went into my son Chase’s class for tutoring. I’d e-mailed Chase’s teacher one evening and said, “Chase keeps telling me that this stuff you’re sending home is math—but I’m not sure I believe him. Help, please.” She e-mailed right back and said, “No problem! I can tutor Chase after school anytime.” And I said, “No, not him. Me. He gets it. Help me.” And that’s how I ended up standing at a chalkboard in an empty fifth-grade classroom while Chase’s teacher sat behind me, using a soothing voice to try to help me understand the “new way we teach long division.” Luckily for me, I didn’t have to unlearn much because I’d never really understood the “old way we taught long division.” It took me a solid hour to complete one problem, but I could tell that Chase’s teacher liked me anyway. She used to work with NASA, so obviously we have a whole lot in common. Afterward, we sat for a few minutes and talked about teaching children and what a sacred trust and responsibility it is. We agreed that subjects like math and reading are not the most important things that are learned in a classroom. We talked about shaping little hearts to become contributors to a larger community—and we discussed our mutual dream that those communities might be made up of individuals who are kind and brave above all. And then she told me this. Every Friday afternoon, she asks her students to take out a piece of paper and write down the names of four children with whom they’d like to sit the following week. The children know that these requests may or may not be honored. She also asks the students to nominate one student who they believe has been an exceptional classroom citizen that week. All ballots are privately submitted to her. And every single Friday afternoon, after the students go home, she takes out those slips of paper, places them in front of her, and studies them. She looks for patterns. Who is not getting requested by anyone else? Who can’t think of anyone to request? Who never gets noticed enough to be nominated? Who had a million friends last week and none this week? You see, Chase’s teacher is not looking for a new seating chart or “exceptional citizens.” Chase’s teacher is looking for lonely children. She’s looking for children who are struggling to connect with other children. She’s identifying the little ones who are falling through the cracks of the class’s social life. She is discovering whose gifts are going unnoticed by their peers. And she’s pinning down—right away—who’s being bullied and who is doing the bullying. As a teacher, parent, and lover of all children, I think this is the most brilliant Love Ninja strategy I have ever encountered. It’s like taking an X-ray of a classroom to see beneath the surface of things and into the hearts of students. It is like mining for gold—the gold being those children who need a little help, who need adults to step in and teach them how to make friends, how to ask others to play, how to join a group, or how to share their gifts. And it’s a bully deterrent because every teacher knows that bullying usually happens outside her eyeshot and that often kids being bullied are too intimidated to share. But, as she said, the truth comes out on those safe, private, little sheets of paper. As Chase’s teacher explained this simple, ingenious idea, I stared at her with my mouth hanging open. “How long have you been using this system?” I said. Ever since Columbine, she said. Every single Friday afternoon since Columbine. Good Lord. This brilliant woman watched Columbine knowing that all violence begins with disconnection. All

digging when she got back. It was estimated that there were more than eight thousand people sleeping rough on the streets of London. And last year more than six hundred deaths of homeless people were recording across the country. More than a hundred of those were in London alone. And those were just the ones who were found. She wondered how many died and never got recorded — how many slipped through the cracks and weren’t added to the statistics.  More than a quarter of a million people were reported missing every year in the UK, and these numbers were growing. Twenty-eight missing kids, though. She looked at the files. They had nothing in common other than that they were young, and someone, somewhere, was wondering where they were. How many were dead already?  ‘Johansson,’ Roper said, his voice hard. ‘Hmm?’ She looked up, still in her chair. ‘I asked what you’d been doing all morning?

Lost child - middle children or the youngest. They get the least amount of attention, especially in a family engulfed by chemical dependency. They are followers, not leaders. They engage in a lot of fantasy. May be loners and are not disruptive, so they often slip through the cracks at school and home. Later in life they often suffer with anxiety and depression. They are not risk takers and fear intimacy. Since they are almost invisible at home, they don’t cause problems.

So MI5 and MI6 officers should not be seen to condone torture and must certainly not torture any prisoners themselves. But, crucially, they could continue to question people whom they knew were being tortured. The door that could have been shut upon the use of torture during British operations against Islamist terrorism had been left open just a crack. A crack was all that was needed. Over the years to come, all manner of horrors would slip quietly through.

Believing that Kelley was the starting point of her adversity would always be easier than believing she’d simply slipped through an unlucky crack.

The crowd were cheering and Geraldine led the Ass squad in that annoying as fuck song about princesses as they all celebrated her win, but I ignore them as I moved forward to offer Roxy a hand up. “I’ll toss Mildred back in her room, heal her and cast a sleeping spell on her so that she can properly recover,” Cal announced as he moved around us and I couldn’t help but smile at him. It might have annoyed the fuck out of me that he’d been with my girl, but he really was a good friend. A true brother. He threw Mildred over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and shot out of the room as Seth howled in excitement. “Come on,” I said to Roxy. “I’ll clean you up and heal those wounds.” “Okay.” Roxy followed me back to the couch and I sat her down in my spot before throwing a ring of fire and a silencing bubble up around us to give us some pretence of privacy. “Doesn’t this count as us being alone?” Roxy asked as I dropped to my knees in front of her and she pulled her busted bottom lip between her teeth. That shouldn’t have been hot, but it really fucking was. “I’m going with no,” I replied, but as the ground trembled beneath my knees I had to admit it did. “Maybe you should just-” “I’m going to look after you,” I growled, leaving no room for negotiation. “So just let me.” Her lips parted, eyes flared, fingers gripped the edge of the couch and I was sure she was about to tell me no, but instead she just nodded. I reached out and curled my fingers wound around her waist as I pressed healing magic from my skin into hers, closing my eyes so that I could concentrate. She had cracked ribs and healing bones was more difficult than damaged tissue. She fell still as I shifted my hands over her flesh and I tried to ignore the way the floor quaked beneath me. We couldn’t stay in this bubble for long, but I wished that we could. I wished we could just build a bubble where the stars couldn’t see us and stay in it forever. Although I guessed if I offered her that she’d just say no again. I sighed as my magic depleted, using the last drops of it to heal her and clean the blood from her skin after burning through so much in the game. A soft touch against my hair made me open my eyes and I looked up at her as she pushed the crown onto my head. “Mildred knocked me off of the couch first,” she explained in answer to the question in my eyes. “So you win. Besides, you need a big head like yours to pull off a crown like this.” I snorted a laugh as the ground trembled so violently that I was almost knocked back onto my ass. Roxy quickly pulled the rings and bracelets from her hands and offered them to me too and I pushed them into my pockets wordlessly. But as she reached up to unclasp the blood ruby pendant from around her neck I caught her wrist to stop her. “Keep it,” I said, my gaze slipping to the priceless heart where it lay against her flesh. Dragons didn’t give treasure away. Ever. It was inherited through the family or we bought more of it, but we never gifted it to anyone. It went against everything we stood for and the fierce possessiveness of our natures. But for some reason that I couldn’t fully comprehend, I wanted her to keep that necklace. “It looks better on you anyway.” Her eyes widened but before she could reply, I dropped the wall of fire and stepped away from her. Darcy hurried forward with wild eyes, looking between me and her sister for a long moment like she’d expected us to be arguing or something. But the last thing I was going to do was call Roxy out for beating Mildred’s ass for me. She’d absolutely been working in my interests and I wasn’t even going to pretend to be pissed about it. “Darius fixed me up like new. Did you see the bit when I kneed her in the vag?” Roxy asked as she grinned and Darcy started laughing. “It was classic, you’ve gotta come see Tyler’s slow motion footage of you punching her in the throat too!” (Darius POV)

It was said that whenever the Force closes a hatch, it opens a viewport… and every viewport that had so much as cracked in this past thirteen standard years had found a Dark Lord of the Sith already at the rim, peering in, calculating how best to slip through.

Invisible as an expelled breath and born halfway down the cracks through which he is destined to slip.

Being clever can actually make the process more difficult because clever people are also better at hiding from themselves.But it's important to make that journey because the way we compartmentalise reality can be very dangerous. It blinds us to the way the world is interconnected." "That's why it's important to not oversimplify?" "Exactly'" said John. "That's why you get these poor kids running off to join ISIS. Many young men go through a nihilistic phase, but usually the culture helps them get through it. They learn how to find meaning. But some slip through the cracks. They might shoot up their school or join a religion that promises to make their rage sacred. But for every young man who goes off the deep end there are a thousand more who destroy themselves slowly.

„and when you lose something in the wake of betrayal, it’s like trying to catch smoke with your bare hands. no matter how hard you try, it’s slip’s through the cracks, leaving you with nothing but a bitter aftertaste.

• Jesus was sent to be “the savior of the world.” • Jesus said he would “draw all people” to himself. • Jesus prayed for the salvation of all, and his will is to save everyone. Are these things true? Or will Jesus fail? Most people I’ve met believe Christ will fail spectacularly. Not for them, of course, but for everyone else. Today most modern Christians teach that God lacks either the power or the desire to save us all. They tell us Jesus will not succeed in achieving his stated purpose, and that some people will unfortunately slip through the cracks and be lost forever. I disagree.

We had somehow blundered our way through the cooking class, but we knew we weren't going to get top marks for presentation. And when James Ashton finally came around to our station, he looked moderately entertained by our ravioli. "They look..." Like vaginas. Not that any of us were going to say it. "Like the Olive Branch's specialty," I said instead, echoing his declaration from earlier, and took another sip of the cooking wine. Drew wanted to die. James bit the inside of his cheek, trying hard to keep his professional persona—but there. I saw it. The crack in his image. "How did you even manage this?" he asked only after he was able to look away. "They kept falling apart," Drew said meekly. "So we just kind of... squished them together?" He nodded, his face earnest. "They'll taste great regardless, I'm sure.

This is it. This is who she is. Not a dread terror of the night, but a small supple being that slips through the cracks like water.

Funny how the mind worked, some memories slipping through the cracks, others firmly planted like ancient trees whose roots have taken hold.

When I pulled my locker open, a small piece of paper fell to the ground. I bent down and picked it up, quickly realizing it was an envelope with a card inside. Someone must have slipped it through the vent in the door since I didn’t recognize it and my name was scrawled on the outside. Wary but curious, I opened it to find a plain, white note card. Inside was a gift card to my favorite coffee shop on Main Street, the one Grace and I liked to go to. I was excited for exactly half a second before I read the message written in serial killer print on the card. Bex, For the sake of Savage River’s overrun emergency room, use this to buy yourself something to eat. If you keep starving yourself, you’ll wind up with a cracked skull. I don’t know what you’ve heard, but scars aren’t a great look on girls. You know what is? A little meat on their bones. EAT! Asher

I was standing in a parking lot, the roof above me cracking and splitting apart, the place about to collapse. The roar of a crowd sounded from beyond the building and I ran to a barred window, looking outside where the Lunar Brotherhood were rioting. Ryder was being dragged through them and I fought with the bars to try and get out, my magic failing me as I bellowed his name. They stabbed him, shouting traitor as they made him bleed, dragging him to a huge stone statue of a Centaur rearing up and pointing to the stars. They wound a vine over its outstretched arm and strung Ryder up and the mob worked to rip him to pieces in a bloody execution. “No!” I cried, panic consuming me as I sought out other paths, ways to avoid this fate, but they were closing in, so many of them curving back onto this one. “How do I save him?” I demanded of the stars as I tried to find a way out. “This day will come,” they whispered inside my head. “How do I stop it?” I begged. “You cannot,” they answered. “Please, I’ll do anything,” I said in desperation. “You will see this come to pass, Gabriel Nox, son of fate,” they answered. “I can’t, I won’t let it happen,” I insisted as my heart began to crack in my chest. “How can I make sure he doesn’t die?” “You ask the wrong questions,” they answered, their voices seeming to slip away into the distance. “What’s the right question?” I begged, feeling them leaving me behind with the weight of this unthinkable destiny laid out before me. They disappeared from my mind like a dying wind and my anxiety flared. “How do I save him?” I cried, but they were gone and I stood alone in an endless expanse of white, too bright to see anything beyond it. I squinted against the light, struggling to focus and suddenly the world shifted. I stood at the base of a dark mountain in Alestria and up ahead of me was a hooded figure leading the Black Card behind them up a rocky path. I could sense the very time and date this would happen. It was one week away on the full moon. King was going to hold a ritual larger than they ever had before. And that would be our chance to strike. But if we failed, I didn’t hold out much hope for the people of Solaria.

Her hand on the doorknob, Bea turned to look at the duke, his handsome features pulled into a scowl, and raised a finger to her lips to shush him. “Remember, if anyone discovers I was here, you will be ruined. Think of your incandescent future with your Incomparable wife and those impossibly perfect children.” While the Duke of Kesgrave stared at her with bewildered horror, she opened the door a sliver, peered through the crack, confirmed that the corridor was unoccupied and slipped silently out of his room. She had a murderer to find.

My words and cries for help were only being screamed into a void. There was no one to save me—except me. The day I took my life back was the same day it was no longer mine to live. I had to let it slip through my fingers in order to survive. And for the second time in my life, I’m asking myself yet again—do you want to survive? Or do you want to waste away? But what is surviving without living, and what is death without pain? It’s an empty, cracked shell where a soul has been born and where that soul will die.

A crack. A doorway, however tiny, through which it could slip and jumpstart my long-dead, long-cold heart.

Shoot him.” I retrain the pistol on his head. He’s so close. I’ve dreamed about this moment for ages. He is a spider I lost sight of, a beast who slipped through the cracks. I’ve been waiting for the moment he popped back up so I could squash him beneath the heel of my boot. He’s practically dead already. But if I put a bullet between his eyes right now, he will never know who bested him. Killing a man when he’s already down? Poor form indeed. “Jas?” Smee says.

Perfect hair. Perfect clothes. Perfect skin. She was the picture of flawlessness, but I was starting to see the cracks beneath her polished façade. Instead of detracting from her beauty, they added to it. They made her more real, like she wasn’t an elusive dream that would slip through my fingers if I tried to touch her.

Fuck him,” she replied. “Seriously, fuck him. You don’t have to answer simply because he calls.” “I’m aware of that.” “Are you though? Because it sounds like you’re letting this asshole corrupt your happiness. You can—and should—block his number. Why didn’t we do that to begin with? I don’t know how that slipped through the cracks but do not allow the utter chaos and disrespect of that man to infiltrate your nice, stable situation. Exit him from your life, Shay.

Muav Limestone rose out of the river, gray and striated: a slip of time sending them back to the Cambrian Period, more than 500 million years before, when multicellular life began to flourish and struggle out of the fecund sea onto a barren shore. Bright Angel Shale appeared beneath it, crumbling horizontal layers of purple and green. It was now nearly impossible to climb from the river to the rim, but a crack in the sheer Redwall wedged with broken timbers showed where Ancestral Puebloans, long ago, built a precarious road. The crew floated below the open mouths of cliff dwellings and sifted through pebbles for arrowheads and sherds. Their fingers startled up tiny toads. Deer watched their passing from dark thickets of mesquite, ghosting away through the tight weave of spiny branches. Below the boats, the dark water concealed its secrets. Hard to believe, but there were fish in that river: fish with leathery skins and torpedo-shaped bodies evolved to withstand endless sandblasting, and monstrous minnows that grew to the length of a man and weighed one hundred pounds.

Sabrina surely had one dead ex-boyfriend on her record. But did Martina have a deceased ex-boyfriend in her past too? Biggie’s words swirled in my head, mixing with the reality I faced: ’Sabrina reminding me of Lil Cease with her crocodile teeth, the warpath we rode apart and together, our laughter, our tears—my tears, their laughter—the player haters, the cocaine-snorting bitches, the cats with no dough, try to play me at my show, pull up and crack doors, short-change bitches with 5 to 20 euro notes not enough to powder their beak and nose. They still tickle me, Sabrina and them midgets cripple me, make me as hard as Martina's nipples be, I'm sour like a pickle be. You disobey the rules. Now the year’s new and I want my spot back; fake two, all the planes I flew, all the bitches I went through, mothersnuggers mad, cause I’m blue, bitches envy us, too many bitches in my club guard your dogs before I stick you for your re-up, maniacs put my name in raps, living by hugs from fake friends, your whole life you live sneaky, you burn when you creep me, you slipping try to break me, living by my love, hating me, they like to hustle backward, Acid rain, Cadillac Fleetwood look what you made me do, you made me and my girl Marine blue make you, open the safe too’ Della Reese had been on my mind since a while as if she wanted to tell me something a wisdom she wanted to share with me. The lyrics and the words the bad people played mindgames with me kept mixing up in my head. ’Maniacs put my name in raps; the club is dead without me they can hustle only backwards with all the beef against me. Blunt wraps and Dutchies, all the smoking accessories; they can't touch me. One third is on me. Martina's butt a public touchy-touchy. My enemies holding their cats shaky. Sabrina is dead or alive, her ghost is under me.

You are not in the habit of making diagnoses, and you don't want to start now. What is worrying you, what is disturbing you, what is frightening you, but which now and then gives you a thrill, is not the suddenness of your metamorphosis, but precisely the opposite: the vague and heavy feeling that it isn't a metamorphosis at all, that nothing has changed, that you've always been like this, even though you only now realize it fully: that thing, in the cracked mirror, is not your new face, it is just that the masks have slipped, the heat in your room has melted them, your torpor has soaked them off. The masks of unswerving conviction, of the straight and narrow. Did you never have an inkling, not once in twenty-five years, of that which, today, has already become inexorable? Did you never see any cracks in what, for you, takes the place of a history? Times when nothing was happening, times when you were simply ticking over in neutral. The fleeting and poignant desire to hear no more, to see no more, to remain silent and motionless. Crazy dreams of solitude. An amnesiac wandering through the Land of the Blind: wide, empty streets, cold lights, faces without mouths that you would look at without seeing. They would never get to you.

Hating him used to be my armor. As long as I could despise Jude, I could surrender my body without handing over the rest of me. It kept me safe, locked behind walls he couldn’t climb. But that shield? It’s cracked, the pieces slipping through my fingers like sand. And Jude’s hands are right there, catching the fragments before they fall away completely,

She poured a cup of coffee and slipped into Ada’s makeshift bedroom to grab the book she’d left on the couch. Her gaze focused on her goal, she tiptoed across the rug. With book in hand, she turned. The spine of the book cracked on the floor. The coffee cup broke into pieces, the air ripe with hazelnut. Trembling started in her knees and spread through her body. A static roar blocked out any other noise. The corners of Ada’s mouth tilted into a slight smile. Washed-out blue eyes stared at the ceiling. Darcy reached for Ada’s hand. The cool, waxy skin reeled her backward. She tripped over the book and landed half on the couch. She slid to a crouch on the floor and pulled the afghan over her knees. She dared another look. Ada lay still. Her mind pinged from memory to memory. Standing on a chair in the kitchen while Ada taught her the secret of fluffy biscuits. Cuddling next to Ada on the couch learning to read from Dr. Seuss books. Ada in old, rolled-up overalls and a floppy straw hat weeding the garden. The way Ada smelled like books and Pond’s cold cream. Ada’s laugh when Darcy had regaled her with made-up stories as a child. They’d run out of time to make new memories.

How was your day?” he asks between kisses. His cold hands slip beneath my shirt and I hiss and draw back, but he just laughs and presses harder against my skin. “Just wait a minute. You’re so warm and I’m so cold. Warm me up.” His hand rises to cup my breast, and I’m not wearing a bra since I’m already in my pajamas. “Mmm,” he hums. “That feels nice and soft.” He sweeps a thumb across my nipple. “Except right there. That feels kind of hard.” He flings my pajama top up and takes my nipple into his mouth. “Easy,” I say. “They’re a little tender.” He hums around my nipple, tugging it gently now. “It’s not that time of the month.” “No…” I wince. “I haven’t had one of those in a couple of months.” His head jerks up. “What?” “Umm…” “Oh, God, Madison,” he rushes to say. He runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “A couple of months?” “You’ve pretty much been inside me at least once a day for the past few months, you idiot.” I push back from him. “You should know this as well as I do!” “Hell, I just thought I was lucky!” he yells. “Well, you can forget about getting lucky ever again!” I yell back. Tears sting my eyes but I refuse to cry in front of him. I go to the bedroom and slam and lock the door. He pounds on the door. “Madison? I’m sorry. Can you let me in?” “Go away!” “I’m not going away! Let me in!” “What are you going to do? Huff and puff and blow the door down? I’d like to see you try!” “Madison, open the damn door.” “This isn’t my fault!” I cry. “It’s all because of that overactive penis of yours!” “My penis is not overactive,” he grumbles at me through the crack in the door. “And if my penis is overactive, then so is your vagina.” I fling the door open. “Don’t you dare refer to my vagina like that! The only time it’s active is when you’re in it, you asshole!” I slam the door shut again. I sniffle and I guess he hears me because his voice gets soft. “Sweetheart, are you crying?” “You’re talking shit about my vagina!” I yell back. He talks through the crack in the door. “Will you let me in if I promise not to talk about your vagina anymore?” I sink down with my back to the door and I catch a tear as it rolls down my cheek, swiping it away. “Madison?” he says, and I can tell he’s down on my level. “Please let me in.” “I was really happy,” I say quietly. “I can’t hear you.” “I was really happy!” I shout. “I heard you that time,” he calls out. “Why were you happy?” “Because all I could think was that we had made something special together. And I was so excited to tell you. But then you had to go and warm your fucking hands on my boobs. And they’re sore all the time, and you didn’t even know it.” The door cracks open and he sticks his hand in, then shoves it a little harder, his movements soft and slow but powerful. Finally he sits in front of me so that we’re knee to knee. “Madison…” “Don’t talk about my vagina,” I say over a sniffle. “I love your vagina, sweetheart. In fact, I’d like to say hello to it right now, but I doubt that’s on the table.” He brushes my hair back from my face. “You surprised me, that’s all.” His voice is soft and low, like he’s trying to soothe a wild beast.

And then, in a flash, she knew her course of action. Jackson Cave, with his personal photos with power players and his immaculate grooming and attire, was a man who cared about how he was perceived. He made his living off winning people over—politicians, juries, the media. And Keri knew he wanted to win her over too. It was his nature. I have to undermine that goal. I have to come at him hard and fast, upend his expectations, keep him off balance. The only way I’m going to poke through his armor and get him to slip up is if I jab him in enough places. Maybe then he’ll say something inadvertently that could lead me to crack the cipher.

Pushing Gabriel inside, Jared shut the door, locked it and turned to Gabriel. “What are you doing here? You shouldn’t have—” Gabriel fell against him. There was no other word for it: he fell, burying his face in Jared’s shoulder and wrapping his arms around Jared’s waist tightly. “Don’t go,” he said, his voice cracking. “Please. I can’t. I can’t—can’t live without you.” Jared closed his eyes. His arms came up around Gabriel and squeezed him hard. Gabriel whimpered, nuzzling into his throat, and Jared felt such an overwhelming rush of love that it was painful not to have an outlet for it. He’d never known it was possible to already miss something one held in one’s arms. His throat thick with loss, he squeezed Gabriel even tighter, but it felt like trying to hold onto the sand slipping through his fingers. “I’m not sorry I met you,” Jared said and Gabriel made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a sob. “Hey,” Jared said gently, taking Gabriel’s chin and forcing him to look up. Wet green eyes met his, and something clenched in Jared’s chest. Gabriel never cried.

One thing was certain: Rose had been wrong about the world becoming small again. Or at least it would not be the same small world it had been. Too much had changed. And amid those shifts and realignments, Anna had slipped through a crack and escaped.

Different’, hmm—there’s the sympathy word I’m looking for. It means you slipped through the cracks and this horrible thing shouldn’t have happened to you.

Loss is a powerful thing, an axe slowly chipping away at a person’s soul. After each death, each devastation, another fragment breaks off, slips through the cracks, gone forever. There’s no repairing the damage, no going back, no returning to life as it was before. Death doesn’t work that way.

Jack Pimento had begun his government career six months earlier in the mailroom without the required background check—a security breach that slipped through the cracks because of a government office laboring under the crushing hardships of overstaffing, nepotism and banker’s hours.

Sudden emotional and physical shocks, bouts of depression, and fear and anxiety make a person vulnerable to possession by ripping tears in his or her barrier of spiritual protection (the aura). The djinn, having no defined form, can slip through these tears and cracks quite easily. It is believed that a person should never go to bed crying or with feelings of fear and worry, as this invites the djinn to attack during sleep.

Brea watched the other Jaren, the Jaren she wasn't sure she wanted to know, slip through the cracks of his face. He was like the changelings in that Dream Box game he was so invested in, Bladescape. Her own interested mask, the one she was supposed to wear, must have slanted a bit around the eyes because then the other Jaren, her Jaren, was back. She watched his dimples puddle in the black of his beard as his mind fumbled for something to say. And this impromptu self-modification, here at the monitoring station at the job where she'd made such a fool of herself, was the closest thing to love that Brea Morgen had ever known.

Tears had been slipping through the cracks every five or six steps on the trail, and now the latch had burst—hidden cries from the man, buried cries from the son, and honest cries from the little boy all poured from my surrender.

Of course, Rita would never know what I really was, not if I could help it. I had worked very hard to keep her blissfully ignorant of the true me, Dexter the Dark, the cheerful vivisectionist who lived for the purr of duct tape, the gleam of the knife, and the smell of fear rising up from a truly deserving playmate who had earned his ticket to Dexterland by slaughtering the innocent and somehow slipping through the gaping cracks in the justice system.… Rita

Even the smallest and most unwanted seed can slip through the cracks and, against all odds, grow up to be a tall, strong, beautiful thing.

While most of the town were settling down to their dinners that evening, Hannah, a raven-haired servant girl, hurried across the marketplace and up the path to the ordinary, where she knocked on the door. Candlelight gleamed through the cracks in the closed shutter after a second knock; the door opened and she slipped inside. Tears started down her cheeks as soon as she tried to speak. “What is it?” said the widow Jennison, keeper of the establish¬ment. “What on earth is wrong?” “Tobias is in trouble.” Hannah sat at one of the trestle tables. Sniffing back her tears, she told the story of her lover’s misadventure. They’d been planning for several months to break away from their servitude and look for a better situation in the West Indies. He’d taken to theft to raise money for the trip, but his master, the tallow chandler Aaron Tuck, discovered his transgressions, and Tobias went into hiding. “There’s men a-lookin’ for him now,” Hannah said as tears came to her eyes again. “We can’t stay here another week. People are sayin’ dreadful things about us that just ain’t true.” “Where is Tobias now?” Nancy asked. “On the neck somewheres. I’m supposed to meet him at midnight.” The widow touched her friend’s hand. She herself had been in trouble years before, so she understood the errors to which the girl’s turbulent feelings were likely to bring her. “Yes, life must seem a prison to you. I can see why you want to leave.” “We’ve gut to leave!” Hannah said. “Just tonight they arrested Marthy Hubbard. Mr. Ridley may want to use us for an example, too.” Nancy went to the cupboard for a pitcher of cider. “I don’t like what’s happened to Martha either. I’ll help you, but you’ll have to promise to be patient and not make things worse.” “What do you mean?” Hannah looked around the dusky room with a frightened glance. Experience had taught her that her elders often resorted to compromise when they meant to help. “I’m going to talk with Governor Willoughby. Now don’t fret, child. He’ll be more sympathetic than you think. Besides, you don’t have any choice but to wait unless you want to live in the woods. There won’t be a ship headed south till next month.” Hannah frowned and took a quick swallow of cider. The two friends talked for a while longer by the light of an iron betty lamp, then Hannah went outside to look for Tobias. But all her hopes went for naught. The constable’s men found him just before midnight on the slender strip of marsh and pasture that connected the Botolph peninsula to the mainland. Now happy that they would get to bed at a decent hour, the men in the search party brought Tobias to the guard-house on the edge of town, where he sat till dawn on a slat bench, dozing or clutching his head in his hands.

Alone. So alone. Dark thoughts spread through her head like a virus, slipping through every crack.

What we pass on moves forward to future generations. Never let anything important slip through the cracks.

The gods were on the cusp of completing their ritual when the archangels hit them. They had swum across the wharf area and slipped up the rocks to assault the gods from behind. All seven burst in through the pillared open-air sanctuary, swords flashing. The gods drew their weapons. Dagon stuck his sword into his lower fishy half and cut it off with a swipe. He would not be hampered in battle. Everyone paused for a moment. The four gods stood facing off against the seven archangels, each waiting for the other to make a move. The mightiest of Yahweh’s heavenly host were here to bind the Watcher gods who would be fighting for their eternities. This was going to be brutal. An earthquake rattled the foundation of the temple. Everyone had to catch their balance. Dust and debris fell from the cracks in the stone above their heads. Asherah and the gods smiled. The archangels realized it had been no earthquake. That was an announcement of the arrival of something. Something very huge. Something from the depths of the sea. The water behind the gods suddenly exploded upward with the form of the seven headed sea dragon of chaos: Leviathan. It burst out of the water and leapt over the manmade jetty that housed the temple. Mikael, now healed, joined his fellow archangels for the fight. He saw the huge four hundred foot long serpentine body fly past them through the air. It landed on the wharf side with a huge splash that drenched everyone in the temple. Its double tail followed, with a swipe at the architecture. It smashed half the structure, wiping it into the water with the force. Gods and angels fell beneath the debris of the other half collapsing on top of them.

When I can’t sleep, every wrong I’ve ever committed slips in through the cracks in the doors and windows like the ghosts in Poltergeist.

a figment who’d slipped through the cracks of history and been forgotten.

The population, who was not part of the destruction process, kept silent, closed their eyes, raised no questions, expected no explanation. Few and far between were some compassionate individuals, who hid a Jew here and there. Those were the exceptions that proved the rule. The ones who survived lived in places where one had a chance to slip through the cracks. In some areas of Europe, for example, the Old Kingdom of Romania (Moldavia, Oltenia, Muntenia), most of the Jewish population survived. In Bulgaria and in Italy, the majority of their small Jewish communities survived, lived to see the end of the Second World War. There happened to be a few, too few, areas where our brothers and sisters survived.

It was only outside in the sun and heat that she began to feel the weight of what she had done. Her feet were terribly hot and slipping in her shoes, and the sand worked its way in. With each step she fell more into herself, and her stomach roiled with the curdled truth of her betrayal. I can see you, she imagined God saying. The basket of eggs hit her hip and one shell cracked, freeing yolk and white into a slippery mess, which dripped through the wicker and landed in thick shiny drops on her skirt. * 

We lost sight of some of the principal reasons for government: to protect the rights of the minority against the majority; to invest in things the market doesn’t like paying for, like education, infrastructure, and deep research; and to provide a safety net for those who slip through the cracks of the capitalist marketplace. Many came to see government as a threat to liberty, not its protector.

Yeah. Still.” THEY CIRCLED the block one more time, checking houses with lights: the house across the street from Hanson’s had lights, as did the one on the left. “If we’re gonna do it, best not to circle again,” Del said. “Drop me off,” Lucas said, and pulled on the gloves. Lucas climbed out in front of the lights-out house, walked quickly down the sidewalk and then up the walk to Hanson’s place, and rang the doorbell. Rang it again, did a quick check around, pulled out the rake, rang the doorbell again, and slipped the rake into the lock. The rake sounded like somebody shaking a tray of dinner forks: not hard, just shaking it a little. Lucas kept the turning pressure on the lock, and felt it go. He took the knob, turned it, called, “Hey, Roger. You home?” No answer. He stepped inside, pushed the door shut, and turned on the light. Burglary notes: if you’re burglarizing a house, don’t go through the door and leave the house dark, and look around with the flashlight. The neighbors will call the cops. On the other hand, turning on the light is absolutely normal. Lucas called out again: “Hey, Hanson? Hey . . .” Silence. He started moving, going swiftly through the living room, through the kitchen to the back door. He unlocked it, cracked it open. Then back through the house, checking the three bedrooms. One had been

Love doesn’t come when it’s convenient,” his mother said. “It crashes into your life when you least expect it, when your guard is down and you’re looking the other way. Love slips through the cracks and into the corners of your heart. By the time you realize it’s found you, there is no escape.

Look at us. Two lonely kids who slipped through all the cracks but then climbed right back up to the top of the world.

The way Richie saw it, something had happened to mainstream music during the post-grunge phase of the ’90s and so far this year’s releases had been the most vapid of the lot, save for a few that maybe had some artistic expression if you listened hard enough (and excluding the Chili Peppers record, which ruled). Corporate major labels and MTV had joined forces in a union of evil to destroy all semblance of art from the world and churn the charred remains—not art anymore but products—through a dollar factory of unfettered capitalism, squeezing out the big bucks as quickly as possible before the whole crazy ride comes to a screaming, bloody end. Which it would. All of this would come to a tragic end; the whole western world had gone mad, taking mindless consumerism to dizzying new heights as most of the East scrambled to get in on the action. Meanwhile, people like him and Alabama slip through the cracks and no one in this apathetic hellhole gives a shit, too busy patching over the vacancies of their lives in desperate attempts to forget the dreams they abandoned when they sold out to the machine. Of course he and Alabama were junkies. Of course they were thieves. What choice did they have when you got right—right—down to it? Their fates had been sealed when society had set itself upon this dark path, and there would be many more Richies and Alabamas to come so long as it stayed the course.

ORDINARILY, children are supposed to spend their childhood like saplings sheltered in a greenhouse. Even if on occasion some wind or rain of the real world slips in through the cracks, a child is not supposed to be weatherbeaten in earnest by the sleet and snow.

In the vast expanse of the ever twisting universe, many often seek for their gods in the crevices of fallen stars; in the remnants of dead power and inside the heart of the deceased loved ones. They assume the gods are hiding, that their sanity blasting forms are not to be beholden in direct sight. Therefore, many are under the impression that the gods will slip through the cracks of the fleeting moments you have averted your gaze from their radiance. That, then, they will find you with their thorns and cruel fists and you will say 'but I have believed! I have always believed!', and it will never be enough.

After that first night, I expected not to see them again, as the campus was massive, and none of us had the same major. None of us lived near one another and all of us were in different grades. Yet, everywhere I went, I kept running into these same three individuals. Even though there were well over 30,000 students on campus, these same three popped up everywhere I went. At first, it seemed like an uncanny coincidence. My whole life had been void of these types of caricatures, now they were everywhere. In reality, God was pursuing me; He refused to let me slip through the cracks.

It unfolded like a stop-motion film of a blooming rose: bright, beautiful and blindingly fast. And I wanted to laugh as I ducked and lunged; wanted to sing as I sank my fist wrist deep in an abdomen, whipped an elbow up, up, through a fragile jawbone, slid to the side of a thrusting arm and took it, turning it, leaving it, letting the body follow in an ungraceful arc. My heart was a tireless pump, arteries and airways wide. I was unstoppable lost in the joy of muscle and bone and breath. Axe kick to the central line of fuddled mass on the floor; disappointment at the sad splintering of ribs and not the hard crack of spine. Mewl and hail of body trying to sit; step and slam, hammer fist smearing the bone of his cheek. Latex slipping on sweat. Body render my hands folding to the floor, not moving. Nothing moving but me, feeling vast and brilliant with strength, immeasurable and immortal.

There isn't any family on Mom's side. She's sansei, third generation Japanese. Her grandparents emigrated from the thirties. They didn't speak the language and only had a whisper of a better life when they boarded a ship bound for America. After World War II, they slipped their heirloom kimono under the bed, put up Christmas trees in December, and exclusively spoke English. But some traditions refuse to fade. They seep through the cracks and cling to the walls---remove your shoes before entering the house, always bring a gift when visiting someone for the first time, celebrate the New Year by eating Toshikoshi soba and mochi.

two lonely kids who slipped through all the cracks, but then climbed right back up to the top of the world

Between the dictatorship of technology and the technology of dictatorship, man no longer finds a crack through which he can slip away.

When we first come into the world, we are small, fragile, and defenseless. We are totally dependent on the love and care of our parents, especially our mothers. In our modern society, we have learned very well how to take care of the physical, biological, and even the developmental needs of our babies, even though parents at various socio-economic levels still face vastly different challenges as they meet their infants’ needs. But we have let a vital need, the one whose fulfillment will determine our ability to have a feeling of self-worth and security, slip through the cracks of modern life. If our emotional needs are not met at the right time, we will face a daunting task later in life as we try to heal the structural wounds of our personalities. Like a plant that doesn’t get enough water or sun early on, we will have trouble growing to our full height, no matter how much fertilizer we get later. Fortunately, unlike plants, we can direct our consciousness and self-awareness toward healing, which can give us new foundations for fulfilling our lives.

lowered his head and charged. Nathan shot him through the top of his skull. The man went down in an ungraceful swan dive. His chin cracked on the concrete at the same time he landed on the plate. The orange light vanished, and Nathan found himself engulfed in darkness. He slipped out of the room and hurried over to the Dumpster. Using it for cover, he peered over its rim and looked for any kind of

A sudden blast rang through the air, vibrating the glass windows. A flock of black starlings burst from the maples lining the road. I flinched, sucking in a sharp breath of cold air and resisted the urge to drop to the cracked sidewalk. Surprise faded quickly and guilt churned deep within my gut. A sickening shame that was almost unbearable. So much regret. Angry at myself, I shoved the feeling aside. Emotions would only weaken me. A woman with gray hair who was walking her poodle next to me froze, her gaze pinned to the café. “My God, I think they’re being robbed!” I didn’t respond but continued down the sidewalk, forced my feet forward as she fumbled with her cell phone. Taking in a deep breath, I slipped the ear buds of my iPod into my ears. Home. I had to make it home before I was late, before nerves got the better of me and I

Most events people referred to as tragedies happened suddenly and spectacularly: earthquakes shaking entire cities to the ground, spacecrafts breaking up in the heat of reentry, nuclear reactors melting down during routine tests. These were the things we worried about, guarded against, spent countless hours training for. But Arik was realizing now that disaster could be dissembled into small unidentifiable components and smuggled past even our best defences. It could be allowed to accumulate right in front of us without tripping an alarm or registering on a sensor. Misfortune knew how to use our egos and our pride against us to lure us into vulnerable and defenceless positions. The more obstacles you placed in death's path, the more it was compelled to slip in through the cracks.

Politics and social systems cast only the coarsest of nets over the world, and humans are the type of fish that will forever slip through the holes. Even should we demolish that contrivance that is the emperor system and institute some new structure in its place; that, too, would be nothing more than a more highly evolved contrivance. While it is our fate to be forever trapped within this cycle, humans will always slip through the cracks. They will be decadent, and the systems will thereby get their comeuppance

I didn’t think. I shoved Kenjii into the safe nook between the front seats and scrambled toward the door as the helicopter jolted again, righting itself. Daniel lunged for me and missed. Wind rushed in through the open door. I could barely breathe, barely see. Then I saw Rafe’s hands gripping the bottom frame. Rafe’s hands slipping from the bottom of the door. I dropped and grabbed his wrists just as he lost his grip. As he fell, I shot forward. I kicked wildly, trying to hook something with my legs. Then someone caught my foot and I stopped with a jolt. I didn’t need to look back to see who had me. The same person who’d had my back since we were five. Daniel. “Corey, get over here!” he shouted. The helicopter lurched, and I slid again, Daniel still holding my ankle. My hands were locked around Rafe’s wrists, his around mine. Then Corey caught my other foot, and the helicopter leveled off. I could hear them shouting inside. Their words came in fits and starts, sucked away by the wind roaring past my ears. And in those first few seconds of confusion, I didn’t really even understand what had happened. I could hear the wind. Feel the wind. Taste it even. But it took a moment for me to crack my eyes open and realize I was hanging outside the helicopter. Hanging outside the helicopter. The earth bobbed and whirled below us, trees and rock and water spinning into a blur. “Don’t look down!” I thought it was Daniel, but then realized Rafe was staring up at me. “I’ve got you!” I shouted. He smiled, this weirdly calm smile. “I know.

something is terribly wrong. But a moment later, the unpleasant thought simply slips through the cracks of my broken mind and is gone. I am a neuroscientist. For my entire career, I have studied

Separation changes the landscape of life. The strong develop cracks on the bends and twists along a rocky terrain. The entrance of newcomers and unexpected truths increase the necessity of commitment, as the old slips into the new…

So fundamental is our desire to catch a glimpse of another way of life, or to share a glimpse of our way of life with another, that even when the forces of the Latter have bolted the city’s doors, the forces of the Former will find a means to slip through the cracks.

This book has the best quote describing the feeling of getting drunk. "I was starting to get drunk now, and I was clinging with my fingertips to the last vestige of decorum. Soon, however, I knew there would come that moment when, without anyone's bidding, I would slip through a crack in the floorboards and find myself rowing across the River Styx with my demon entourage, and not until morning would I fully be able to assess the consequences". Perfect.

Your name is Rain, isn’t it? Rain slips in the cracks and slides through the seams. You can do it? Can’t you?

[Dagmar] Krause's material, on the other hand, is the kind of lunar voyage that reminds one how fortunate we are that a few record execs smoked dope in the late 1960s; how else could this music have slipped through the cracks?

Lists are a good starting point. When tackling a problem, write down every idea, however small, that floats across your radar. Put those that will clearly advance your long-term goal on a To-Do list and the rest on a Maybe list in case they turn out to be important later on. Place the latter in a drawer and glance at it from time to time to make sure nothing slips through the cracks.

The Juez de Instrucción did not miss it. He said stiffly, ‘Presumably you are aware how our system works here in Spain?’ ‘I am,’ Mackenzie said. ‘Very similar to the French. A Guardia Civil which is part of the army, like the French Gendarmerie. A fragmented civilian police force which doesn’t talk to the military, and a system of judges who know nothing about police work but somehow contrive to direct investigations.’ Judge Aguado’s pallor darkened, and a clenching of his jaw was betrayed by the depressions that appeared in each of his cadaverous cheeks. He said, ‘While the British police divide and subdivide themselves into so many different forces that they lack any coherence.’ ‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Mackenzie said, oblivious of the judge’s intention to offend him in return. ‘They are uncoordinated and completely disjointed. Criminals are slipping through the cracks all the time.’ No one knew what to say. And it was only when Mackenzie caught Cristina’s smirk

Cage gestured to my running leg. “Testing a new leg?” I shook my head. “Underwear.” His brow wrinkled and the guys behind him inched a bit closer, ears perked. “What?” Cage asked. “My favorite underwear has been discontinued. I’m trying a new brand and the best way to test them out is to go for a jog. I want to know before I buy ten pairs if they’re going to ride up on me. I’m not a thong girl. I don’t like anything shoved up my ass.” His cheeks turned red while taking a hard swallow. The fishing crew tried and failed to hide their chuckling. One of the guys slapped him on the shoulder. “We’ll meet you out front.” He cleared his throat. “Our condolences on the ass news.” That sparked a new round of laughter as the guys piled onto the elevator. When the doors shut, Cage pursed his lips and sighed. “Thanks for that.” I shrugged. “What?” “What …” It’s possible his intention was to be serious or maybe upset, but he couldn’t finish his thought without rubbing his hand over his mouth to hide his smirk. “You don’t like ‘anything shoved up your ass.’ Really, Lake?” Rolling his eyes to the ceiling, he shook his head. “So you’re big into fishing, huh?” “Don’t change the subject.” He narrowed his eyes at me. Too bad he still couldn’t keep a straight face. It would have given his case a lot more merit. Those were favorite moments of mine, when he was ninety percent sure my actions were an embarrassing side effect of my Sahara Desert humor, yet still ten percent holy-shit-she’s-serious. I loved that ten percent. I worked my ass off for that ten percent. “I’m sorry, what was the subject? Oh yeah, things I don’t like in my crack. Sounds like a Jeopardy category or a Family Feud survey. ‘Name something Lake Jones does not like up her crack. Underwear. Survey says? Ding ding ding … ninety-four people surveyed said underwear, the other six said cock. And I do believe those six lascivious idiots are downstairs waiting for you.” Cage observed me; it was never just a stare or a lingering look. His eyes narrowed a fraction, but never lost their sparkle. The wetting of his lips was always followed by biting them together like he refused to speak until he’d figured me out. And just before he spoke, his dimples surrendered to his impending grin. “I’m going to text you an address. Meet me there in three hours.” “What if I haven’t sorted through this underwear situation by then?” My head tilted to the side as my poker face slipped a bit, revealing my own impending grin. “Hmm …” He pulled me to him, his hands easing into the back of my running shorts. “Don’t fret over it,” he whispered before sucking my earlobe into his mouth. My lips parted, and eyes closed, as I held onto his biceps to keep my knees from buckling. “Panties are optional.” Three words and my knees buckled. Thankfully—not really thankful at all—he fisted the back of my new panties and yanked up. My hero? No. The wedgie was underway a few seconds before my knees gave out. I gasped. He smirked. “I think you should consider getting used to the idea—the feeling—of something in that sexy ass of yours.” Not much left me speechless, but my first non-brother-male-induced wedgie left me with cow eyes and a numb tongue. He winked just before the elevator doors shut.

HE WOKE WITHOUT A SOUND, his bones knowing it was time. Both eyes scraped open, followed a crack across gray ceiling, seeing a lonely road through wilderness. His bare back registered a rumpled sheet below the left shoulder blade. Gold light glowed behind a green curtain; darkness was finally arriving in Alaska. He had been awake less than ten seconds when his mind began projecting images of roadway slipping under a motorcycle wheel. Like an athlete visualizing ideal form he saw gravel for eight kilometers, asphalt for the next fifteen, mud for three…on and on south to the river. The road held many ways to fail.

Crack had killed and taken televisions and watches and homes. As Slip Rock drove through Brooklyn, everyone waving and feeling the jealous burn of his ride knew crack had bought it. Crack had filled his pockets with cash and put the heavy gold chain around his neck. Crack had bought him a gun and let him rent the apartment above his mother’s where there was always a woman or two—fine as the ones on Yo! MTV Raps. Crack had paid for his fresh Caesar haircut and the do-rag and the Murray’s Nu Nile Aubrey figured he used at night to make the waves he sported beneath his Kangol.

But I am only free in small places. Government is big, we are small. We are only free when we slip through the cracks.

If you ask my mother whether she ever considered the ramifications of having a mixed child under apartheid, she will say no. She wanted to do something, figured out a way to do it, and then she did it. She had a level of fearlessness that you have to possess to take on something like she did. If you stop to consider the ramifications, you’ll never do anything. Still, it was a crazy, reckless thing to do. A million things had to go right for us to slip through the cracks the way we did for as long as we did.

storage vessel A storage vessel is, at heart, a container built to meet the industry rules for keeping specific products secure. While oil companies rely on them most, you will also see these tanks in food plants, fertilizer works, and several other fields. The guidelines that shape each tank vary widely because every material, from crude to cooking oil, has its own safety and stability needs. Given this patchwork of rules, picking the right system usually demands someone who has spent years on the job. On top of that, the entire cycle-emptying, cleaning, and then refilling-must be planned so nothing slips through the cracks. The desired maximum requirements are the requirements for API 650 and API 620 published through the funds of the American Petroleum Institute.For a deeper look at storage vessels, check the article Anpam Engineering put out last month. Classification of storage vessels One common way to sort these tanks is by the style of roof they use. According to the type of ceiling According to the type of floating ceiling Special vessels You can also group them by what sits inside the tank, by whether they are insulated, or simply by how wide they are. Some garage vessels have floating roofs. This floating roof rises and falls with a liquid degree with the vessels, lowering the steam hole over the fluid. Industry insiders often say that liquid roofs are more than just clever design; they are basic safety gear and a first line of defense against leaks in oil refineries. A storage vessel is a storage vehicle that is compatible with the standard for storing fabrics. At the end of the day, every vessel must follow rules that match the exact chemistry of what it holds. In addition, storage vessels should be designed with process considerations before and after the storage system. With so many important factors to consider, picking the right storage system really calls for hands-on experience. Any plan or layout must follow the unique methods the company already uses. Anpam engineering experts have a technical knowledge level that provides solutions to complex storage system needs. In our line you can find many steel systems.

A weight shifted on my bed and my hands slipped into soft fur as I rolled towards the comforting heat of the body beside me. Seth’s Wolf form was damn huge, but he still managed to somehow fit in my single bed and leave me with enough room to breathe. I hadn’t asked him to stay with me, but I also hadn’t asked him to keep me company at the palace all summer and he often had. All the Heirs had. Another groan in the room told me we weren’t alone and I cracked my eyes open, peering through a swathe of white fur to where Max was passed out by the window in a nest of blankets. I snorted at him as he pushed himself up onto his elbows. “Why didn’t you go back to your room when Darius and Caleb left?” I asked through a yawn as I sat up. “I was gonna, but then I touched this blanket and it was so soft. What’s it made of, fucking clouds?” Max brushed his fingers up and down it. “Anyway, I made this nest like some sort of Tiberian Rat and camped here. So… this blanket is mine now, yes?” I blew out a breath of amusement. “Sure, take it.

One of my subjects was Child Protection, and the more I learnt, the more I wanted to know. During this time, I did a paper on youth suicide. I was absolutely horrified at the rate at which our young people slipped through the cracks of all services that were available to them, which resulted in very tragic circumstances. Because of this, our young feel rejected, and if they do not have a loving, supportive family structure, this can often make them targets to the undesirables, drugs, sexual abuse, and homelessness, which often leads to suicide. Even adults fall through the cracks of the mental health system, and if they have children, this often becomes a reoccurring cycle, and it continues until a service can find a way to break the cycle, and it is often easier said than done.

I flop onto the couch, anxiety heavy in my chest. What is my life? How did I get here—constantly catering to someone else’s needs and emotions while mine slip through the cracks?

Tiny eyes in the dark, small fingers at the roots, heaving them up, up. Her foot slipped free and she was up again, unable to thank the Little Folk who had already vanished, unable to do anything but run, limping now. The man was so close, the bracken cracking behind, but she knew the way. She had come through here so many times that the darkness was no obstacle.

Another baffling fact about K-129’s journey is the absence of reaction to its aberrant behavior. At that moment, no one in either the Soviet fleet headquarters in Vladivostok or the U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet headquarters at Pearl Harbor raised the slightest concern over the missed signals or the deviation from course. It seems that K-129 had slipped through the cracks in the security systems of both navies.

She hasn’t a clue, so she sits on her bench, staring at the water for some length of time that’s amorphous, immune to ordinary laws of the world, like a huge octopus reshaping its body to slip through a tiny crack. At some point, she checks her watch. It must be very late by now. Quarter to midnight.

Political historian Barouth Regorab had likened the difference between a planetary government and the Galactic Senate to that between a rural community and a metropolis: “When a person depends upon their neighbor for assistance during the harvest—when strangers are few and familial ties bind the farmer to the freighter captain—the greatest danger is shunning or exile. Mollifying your peers becomes a matter of survival. You have an incentive to iron out differences, or if necessary to bury any radical beliefs that would put you at odds with your community. “In a city of millions, however, a person may build a tailor-made community inside the larger organism. Anger your neighbor and you may move in with a friend. Become an outcast among your co-workers and you may take a job with a competitor. Diverse arts and philosophies may flourish without the flattening effect of more tight-knit communities, and differences may be celebrated. Yet a lack of common ties can also cause neighbors to see one another as rivals. Ideological opponents can be dismissed without need for engagement. And good people may slip through the cracks, lost in the chaos and written off as someone else’s problem.

Or maybe the dreamer was still alive only inside me, buried deep where I thought I had killed it long ago. But sometimes, its whispers still slipped through the cracks of my emotional dam – that dam I built so high to protect myself. I told myself I no longer needed anything in this world… but deep down, more than anything, I still wanted to love and to be loved. But… it wasn’t meant to be.

our tacit agreement. I’ll go in, then we’ll see what happens. At least you’ll have a spy inside the gate, at that point.” “It seems wrong to use you so.” “Mm, but kids only dare defy those whom they really trust. The fact that I’m still mostly a stranger to him gives me an advantage, which I invite you to use.” “True enough. Well . . . all right.” The door opened a cautious crack. Miles waited. It opened a little wider. He sighed, turned sideways, and slipped through. Nikki shut it again immediately,

boom rolls over the terrain but stops sharply in a close-ended way, as if jerked back. A hit is blunt and solid like an airborne grunt. When the sound is heard and identified, it isn’t easily forgotten. When Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett heard the sound, he was building a seven-foot elk fence on the perimeter of a rancher’s haystack. He paused, his fencing pliers frozen in midtwirl. Then he stepped back, lowered his head, and listened. He slipped the pliers into the back pocket of his jeans and took off his straw cowboy hat to wipe his forehead with a bandanna. His red uniform shirt stuck to his chest, and he felt a single, warm trickle of sweat crawl down his spine into his Wranglers. He waited. He had learned over the years that it was easy to be fooled by sounds of any kind outside, away from town. A single, sharp crack heard at a distance could be a rifle shot, yes, but it could also be a tree falling, a branch snapping, a cow breaking through a sheet of ice in the winter, or the backfire of a motor. “Don’t confirm the first gunshot until you hear the second” was a basic tenet of the outdoors. Good poachers knew that, too. It tended to improve their aim. In a way, Joe hoped he wouldn’t hear a second shot. The fence wasn’t done, and if someone was shooting, it was his duty to investigate.

Fred gave a shout of triumph, before the squeal of a whistle sounded from outside, the door bursting open as a police sergeant with a truncheon in his hand crashed into the room, the baton swinging like a hatchet as the police flooded into the bar. ‘Run for it,’ Fred shouted, his hands dragging Jack to his feet as he pushed his way through the crowded room, the sound of whistles and wood cracking against skulls filling the air behind them. Jack leapt over the bar and slipped into the display of bottles that lined the rear wall, the glass smashing as he fell to the ground, his eyes glancing to the Egyptian owner who was sat sobbing in the corner. ‘Sorry, mate,’ Jack said, patting the man’s stained shirt where a bottle of spirits had spilt over him, before standing to his feet, his eyes staring at the crowded room as the police dragged the drunken soldiers into the street. A shout sounded to his left and he saw Reg clinging to a table as a red capped sergeant pulled on his legs. ‘He’s got me,’ Reg squealed, as his hands began to slip. Jack picked up an ashtray and launched it at the policeman, the NCO ducking as the heavy glass crashed above his head, his fingers releasing Reg as he dived for cover. ‘Come on,’ Jack said, holding out his arms as Reg sprang towards the bar, his hands grabbing him by the sleeves and dragging him over the counter. ‘It’s more dangerous in here than it is at the front,’ Reg

Because I was scared. I'd convinced myself you were better off without me in your life, less likely to get hurt." "Madison." There's a gentle firmness in his voice that makes me look at him. "That was never true. Not for a single day." I blink back the sudden sting in my eyes. "You don't understand, Jax. I was a mess. I still am. There are days when I can barely get out of bed, when everything feels too much and not enough at the same time." The words tumble out faster now. "And you—you've always been so sure, so steady. You deserve someone who isn't...broken." Jaxon's expression changes, something fierce flashing in his eyes. "Don't say that. Don't ever say that." "What? That I'm broken? We both know⁠—" "No," he cuts me off, his hand coming up to cup my cheek. "You're not broken, Mads. You're human. You've been through things no one should have to go through, and you're still here. Still fighting. Still trying. That's not broken—that's brave." I shake my head, unable to accept his words. "I don't know how to do this, Jax. I don't know how to be what you deserve." His brows pull together, his lips parting like I just gutted him. Then, without hesitation, he shakes his head. "Mads, you're already what I want." I blink at him, my throat burning. "How can you be so sure?" I ask, the question I've been afraid to voice finally slipping out. "How do you know you won't wake up one day and realize this—me—is too much work? That I'm not worth it?" He's quiet for a moment, his thumb stroking my cheek, his eyes never leaving mine. When he speaks, his voice is low, steady, certain. "Because I've known you since we were kids, Mads. I've seen you at your best and at your worst. I've watched you push people away when you're scared, and I've seen the way you love—fiercely, completely when you let yourself." He pauses, his gaze intensifying. "And not once, not for a single moment, have I ever thought you weren't worth everything." The sincerity in his voice makes my chest ache. "But what if I mess this up?" My voice cracks. "What if I run again?" Jaxon's lips curve into a soft smile. "Then I'll come find you, every time.

My husband says he feels like he's an extra in Jurassic Park except someone has turned all the dinosaurs miniature. In Florida, nature is seductive and full of vengeance. To live here is to engage in a ceaseless battle to keep the outdoors from coming in, but in this instance there is absolutely nothing to do but admit defeat: there are hundreds of thousands of lizards out there, with bodies malleable enough to slip through the smallest crack. This is why it's important to know how to catch lizards in mason jars, so we can help them rejoin the countless hordes outside. My mother's backyard is so full of lizards that the grass undulates of its own accord.

I write about the fractures we hide—the quiet moments where truth slips through the cracks.

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But that was the thing about guilt. It didn’t give a damn about facts or reason. It sprouted from the tiniest seeds of doubt, slipped through the cracks of your psyche, and by the time you realized what the ugly darkness oozing through your veins was, it’d already burrowed itself so

But that was the thing about guilt. It didn’t give a damn about facts or reason. It sprouted from the tiniest seeds of doubt, slipped through the cracks of your psyche, and by the time you realized what the ugly darkness oozing through your veins was, it’d already burrowed itself so deep

He leans forward, just close enough to reach into the pocket of my coat, and slips the Breitling inside of it. It falls like a dead weight to the bottom. “Look after it.” Something beautifully melancholic passes through his gaze, and despite my wanting to grab that hammer from his guard and crack him over the head with it, his expression echoes in the hollow chambers of my chest.

When the heart breaks open, the divine often slips in through the cracks.

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