Spinning Heart Quotes

I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong. I will love you as a battlefield loves young men and as peppermints love your allergies, and I will love you as the banana peel loves the shoe of a man who was just struck by a shingle falling off a house. I will love you as a volunteer fire department loves rushing into burning buildings and as burning buildings love to chase them back out, and as a parachute loves to leave a blimp and as a blimp operator loves to chase after it. I will love you as a dagger loves a certain person’s back, and as a certain person loves to wear dagger proof tunics, and as a dagger proof tunic loves to go to a certain dry cleaning facility, and how a certain employee of a dry cleaning facility loves to stay up late with a pair of binoculars, watching a dagger factory for hours in the hopes of catching a burglar, and as a burglar loves sneaking up behind people with binoculars, suddenly realizing that she has left her dagger at home. I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp, and as a gasping person loves a glass of brandy to calm their nerves, and as a glass of brandy loves to shatter on the floor, and as the noise of glass shattering loves to make someone else gasp, and as someone else gasping loves a nearby desk to lean against, even if leaning against it presses a lever that loves to open a drawer and reveal a secret compartment. I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and until all the secrets have gone gasping into the world. I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled. I will love you until every fire is extinguised and until every home is rebuilt from the handsomest and most susceptible of woods, and until every criminal is handcuffed by the laziest of policemen. I will love until M. hates snakes and J. hates grammar, and I will love you until C. realizes S. is not worthy of his love and N. realizes he is not worthy of the V. I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple, and until the apple hates a tree and the tree hates a nest, and until a bird hates a tree and an apple hates a nest, although honestly I cannot imagine that last occurrence no matter how hard I try. I will love you as we grow older, which has just happened, and has happened again, and happened several days ago, continuously, and then several years before that, and will continue to happen as the spinning hands of every clock and the flipping pages of every calendar mark the passage of time, except for the clocks that people have forgotten to wind and the calendars that people have forgotten to place in a highly visible area. I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where we once we were so close that we could slip the curved straw, and the long, slender spoon, between our lips and fingers respectively. I will love you until the chances of us running into one another slip from slim to zero, and until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your memory faced by distant fog, and your fog memorized by a distant face, and your distance distanced by the memorized memory of a foggy fog. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, no matter where you avoid and who you don’t see, and no matter who sees you avoiding where you go. I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this, and now matter how I am discovered after what happens to me as I am discovering this.

The simple things come back to us. They rest for a moment by our ribcages then suddenly reach in and twist our hearts a notch backward.

Remember Love doesn't make the world go round Sex makes it spin for a second or two If you're lucky So do chips, sausage rolls and girls in short skirts Remember Love Lays its fingers on your heart And holds it Under water Remember that When the next girl smiles

He might have been naive, but he didn't care; he said he's rather die with his heart on his sleeve than end up another cynic.

Imagine that the universe is a great spinning engine. You want to stay near the core of the thing - right in the hub of the wheel - not out at the edges where all the wild whirling takes place, where you can get frayed and crazy. The hub of calmness - that's your heart. That's where God lives within you. So stop looking for answers in the world. Just keep coming back to that center and you'll always find peace.

It [the book] was spinning a magic spell around her heart, sticky as a spider's web and enchantingly beautiful..

Life was more difficult in Inkheart, yet it seemed to Meggie that with every new day Fenoglio's story was spinning a magic spell around her heart, sticky as a spider's web and enchantingly beautiful..

No spinning," I said. I wasn't sure my head or heart could take it. Up close, he was so warm, and so beautiful. I was already dizzy enough.

The heart's in it then, spinning dreams, and torment is on the way. The heart makes dreams seem like ideas.

Jesper shrugged again. He adjusted the buttons on his shirt, touched his thumbs to his revolvers. When he felt like this, mad and scattered, it was as if his hands had a life of their own. His whole body itched. He needed to get out of this room. Wylan laid his hand on Jesper’s shoulder. “Stop.” Jesper didn’t know if he wanted to jerk away or pull him closer. “Just stop,” Wylan said. “Breathe.” Wylan’s gaze was steady. Jesper couldn’t look away from that clear-water blue. He forced himself to still, inhaled, exhaled. “Again,” Wylan said, and when Jesper opened his mouth to take another breath, Wylan leaned forward and kissed him. Jesper’s mind emptied. He wasn’t thinking of what had happened before or what might happen next. There was only the reality of Wylan’s mouth, the press of his lips, then the fine bones of his neck, the silky feel of his curls as Jesper cupped his nape and drew him nearer. This was the kiss he’d been waiting for. It was a gunshot. It was prairie fire. It was the spin of Makker’s Wheel. Jesper felt the pounding of his heart—or was it Wylan’s?—like a stampede in his chest, and the only thought in his head was a happy, startled, Oh. Slowly, inevitably, they broke apart. “Wylan,” Jesper said, looking into the wide blue sky of his eyes, “I really hope we don’t die.

It's okay to spin around and around in the same place. Just so long as you're singing your heart out. THAT's what life's all about.

for her, life was as cold as an attic with a window looking to the north, and ennui, like a spider, was silently spinning its shadowy web in every cranny of her heart.

And then we're kissing. His lips are soft and leave mine tingling. I close my eyes, and in the darkness behind them I see beautiful blooming things, flowers spinning like snowflakes, and hummingbirds beating the same rhythm as my heart. I'm gone, lost, floating away into nothingness like I am in my dream, but this time it's a good feeling - like soaring, like being totally free. His other hand pushes my hair from my face, and I can feel the impression of his fingers everywhere that they touch, and I think of stars streaking through the sky and leaving burning trails behind them, and in that moment - however long it lasts, seconds, minutes, days - while he's saying my name into my mouth and I"m breathing into him, I realize this, right here, is the first and only time I've ever been kissed.

I was too dazed to follow right away, because there was something new happening, a wheel inside my heart I’d never noticed before, and it was spinning so fast it made me dizzy. And the farther away she got, the faster it spun, like there was an invisible cord unreeling from it that stretched between us, and if she went too far it would snap - and kill me. I wondered if this strange, sweet pain was love.

Then I saw Juli. She was two tables away from me, facing my direction. Only she wasn't looking at me. She was looking at Jon, her eyes all sparkly and laughing. My heart lurched. What was she laughing about? What were they talking about? How could she sit there and look so... beautiful? I felt myself spinning out of control. It was weird. Like I couldn't even steer my own body. I'd always thought Jon was pretty cool, but right then I wanted to go over and throw him across the room.

I lost something recently," he tells me. My heart swells at the familiar voice, and I spin around to drop-dead-gorgeous cheekbones, a ruby-red visor, and lips that pull into a breathtaking smile. "Found her," he says.

I told him the story of the day I'd been mending pottery with one of the maids in the kitchen at Keramzin, waiting for him to return from one of the hunting trips that had taken him from home more and more frequently. I'd been fifteen, standing at the counter, vainly trying to glue together the jagged pieces of a blue cup. When I saw him crossing the fields, I ran to the doorway and waved. He caught sight of me and broke into a jog. I had crossed the yard to him slowly, watching him draw closer, baffled by the way my heart was skittering around in my chest. Then he'd picked me up and swung me in a circle, and I'd clung to him, breathing in his sweet, familiar smell, shocked by how much I'd missed him. Dimly, I'd been aware that I still had a shard of that blue cup in my hand, that it was digging into my palm, but I didn't want to let go. When he finally set me down and ambled off into the kitchen to find his lunch, I had stood there, my palm dripping in blood, my head still spinning, knowing that everything had changed. Ana Kuya had scolded me for getting blood on the clean kitchen floor. She'd bandaged my hand and told me it would heal. But I knew it would just go on hurting.

Songs and movies tell us that when you meet the one you love, the planet stops spinning, the clouds open up, and your heart begins to sing. Reality is messier than that. The truth is, we meet new people all the time, but we can never tell exactly what they might mean to us. You never know who you’ll forget, or who you’ll need forever.

This world spins from the same unseen forces that twist our hearts.

This was the kiss he'd been waiting for. It was a gunshot. It was prairie fire. It was the spin of Makker's Wheel. Jesper felt the pounding of his heart - or was it Wylan's? - like a stampede in his chest.

Jesper’s mind emptied. He wasn’t thinking of what had happened before or what might happen next. There was only the reality of Wylan’s mouth, the press of his lips, then the fine bones of his neck, the silky feel of his curls as Jesper cupped his nape and drew him nearer. This was the kiss he’d been waiting for. It was a gunshot. It was prairie fire. It was the spin of Makker’s Wheel. Jesper felt the pounding of his heart—or was it Wylan’s?—like a stampede in his chest, and the only thought in his head was a happy, startled, Oh. Slowly, inevitably, they broke apart. “Wylan,” Jesper said, looking into the wide blue sky of his eyes, “I really hope we don’t die.

She lifted one arm up, covering her forehead in a mock swoon. “You’re sweeping me off my feet.” He laughed, shocked by the sound after the shitty day they’d had. He bent his knees and cradled her in his arms, spinning her around while he drank in the magic of her giggles. Finally, he lowered her onto the bed and lay down beside her. “Now you’ve been swept.

The heart is built of starlight And time. A pinprick of longing lost in the dark. An unbroken chord linking the Infinite to the Infinite. My heart wishes upon your heart and the wish is granted. Meanwhile the world spins. Meanwhile the universe expands. Meanwhile the mystery of love reveals itself, again and again, in the mystery of you. I have gone. I will return. Glerk

Magic comes from the heart, from your feelings, your deepest expressions of desire. That's why black magic is so easy—it comes from lust, from fear and anger, from things that are easy to feed and make grow. The sort I do is harder. It comes from something deeper than that, a truer and purer source—harder to tap, harder to keep, but ultimately more elegant, more powerful. My magic. That was at the heart of me. It was a manifestation of what I believed, what I lived. It came from my desire to see to it that someone stood between the darkness and the people it would devour. It came from my love of a good steak, from the way I would sometimes cry at a good movie or a moving symphony. From my life. From the hope that I could make things better for someone else, if not always for me. Somewhere, in all of that, I touched on something that wasn't tapped out, in spite of how horrible the past days had been, something that hadn't gone cold and numb inside of me. I grasped it, held it in my hand like a firefly, and willed its energy out, into the circle I had created with the spinning amulet on the end of its chain.

My lips are fierce with passion. My heart spins fiery beats. A rhythm lives within my fingers and dances in my feet.

My head is spinning, thoughts knocking into one another, but I swallow back the tears. I clench my fists and try not to scream and I tuck my friends in my heart and revenge I think has never looked so sweet.

They had been married for seventeen years; she lived in the deepest room in his heart. And sometimes that meant that wife occurred to him before Mathilde, helpmeet before herself. Abstraction of her before the visceral being. But not now. When she came across the veranda, he saw Mathilde all of a sudden. The dark whip at the center of her. How, so gently, she flicked it and kept him spinning.

The world doesn't stop spinning because you're sad, and that's good; if it did, people would go around breaking hearts like they were sheets of maple sugar, just to keep the world exactly where it is. They'd make it out like it was a good thing, a few crying children in exchange for a peace that never falters or fades. We can be sad and we can be hurt and we can even be killed, but the world keeps turning, and the things we're supposed to do keep needing to be done.

I think the way I feel when I look at Evan comes from her. In pictures taken the day she married my dad, she was reckless, laughing, spinning around in circles. She looked like her whole world was him. She looked a kind of happy I can't even imagine. I don't want that. I don't want to be like that. I don' want to feel the way she did because I know what happens when you do. You love with your whole heart, with everything, and you wake up one morning and kiss someone good-bye the way you always do except you mean it as good-bye forever.

And you're not leaving," she said. "Promise me." It was as if she had asked him to promise to keep breathing, to notice sunshine, to permit the spinning of the earth. What choice did he have? Even if he left her, she would be camped in his heart, an insistent and willful presence. She would match her strides to his on any journey he ever took; she would lie beside him on any bed. Amalie, he said, "that's the easiest promise I've ever had to make.

with every new day, Fenoglio's story was spinning a magic spell around her heart, sticky as spider's webs and enchantingly beautiful

I wish to God I could talk to her the way she wants me to, besides forever making her guess what I’m thinking. Why can’t I find the words?

She ran her fingers through his soft hair, just once. He leaned in to her hand. 'That feels good,' he mumbled. 'You feel good, too.' He hooked an arm around her waist and drew her on to the bed. 'Jacks- what are you doing?' 'Just for tonight.' He tightened his arm, holding her even closer, until her chest was pressed against his bare skin. 'You're injured,' she breathed. 'This makes me feel better.' He spoke against her throat and finished with a lick that made her head begin to spin. Now would have been a really good time to untangle herself.

He had never seen a gunshot wound. He kept asking what it felt like? dull or sharp? an ache or burn? My head was spinning and naturally I could give him no kind of coherent answer but I remember thinking dimly that it was sort of like the first time I got drunk, or slept with a girl; not quite what one expected, really, but once it happened one realized it couldn't be any other way. Neon lights: Motel 6, Dairy Queen. Colors so bright, they nearly broke my heart.

There is much that is immortal in this medieval lady. The dragons have gone, and so have the knights, but still she lingers in our midst. She reigned in many an early Victorian castle, and was Queen of much early Victorian song. It is sweet to protect her in the intervals of business, sweet to pay her honour when she has cooked our dinner well. But alas! the creature grows degenerate. In her heart also there are springing up strange desires. She too is enamoured of heavy winds, and vast panoramas, and green expanses of the sea. She has marked the kingdom of this world, how full it is of wealth, and beauty, and war--a radiant crust, built around the central fires, spinning towards the receding heavens. Men, declaring that she inspires them to it, move joyfully over the surface, having the most delightful meetings with other men, happy, not because they are masculine, but because they are alive. Before the show breaks up she would like to drop the august title of the Eternal Woman, and go there as her transitory self.

Even after your heart breaks into a million pieces and your baby is gone, I am here to tell you- all around you the world will still go on spinning.

I had crossed the yard to him slowly, watching him draw closer, baffled by the way my heart was skittering around my chest. Then he'd picked me up and spun me in a circle, and I'd clung to him, breathing in his sweet, familiar smell, shocked by how much I'd missed him. Dimly, I'd been aware that I still had a shard of the blue cup in my hand, that it was digging into my palm, but I didn't want to let go. When he finally set me down and ambled off to the kitchen to find his lunch, I stood there, my palm dripping blood, my head still spinning, knowing that everything had changed. Ana Kuya had scoled me for getting blood on the clean kitchen floor. She'd bandaged my hand and told me it would heal. But I knew it would just go on hurting. In the creaking silence of the cell, Mal kissed the scar on my palm, the wound made so long ago by the edge of that broken cup, a fragile thing I'd thought beyond repair.

There's no man on this earth can even be assured he'll have a next day.

We were two distinct entities, a planet and its moon, drawn together by a gravitational force out of our control, spinning around each other in perfect synchronicity.

Every Princess has one Prince to share the loves and joys of life, and do you know how that Princess knows which Prince is hers?” “How Mommy?” “From the kiss.” “But how?” “The very first kiss with your Prince will change your life. When your lips touch for the first time, the earth will feel like it stops moving, but in the same moment, the world around you spins. It’ll feel like fireworks in the night sky. Like a bright light in the darkness. You’ll feel your heart beat fast in your ears but silence will surround you. And when you pull apart and open your eyes and look at each other, and really see each other. You’ll know it in that moment, through that kiss, that you’ve just let someone own a piece of your heart, and you’ll live happily ever after.

Oh, Man in the Moon" "Oh, man in the moon, send an evening star to wink at my dreary eyes, and I shall make a wish for a peaceful world that spins with no more lies. Oh, man in the moon, send the night's cool breeze to lull my leery heart, and I shall cast my fears to the wind with ease, and watch them all depart. Oh, man in the moon, send the sandman's dust to rest my weary soul, and I shall slumber in happy dreams until the morning bells do toll.

Look around you--there are people around you. Maybe you will remember one of them all your life and later eat your heart out because you didn't make use of the opportunity to ask him questions. And the less you talk, the more you'll hear. Thin strands of human lives stretch from island to island of the Archipelago. They intertwine, touch one another for one night only in just such a clickety-clacking half-dark car as this and then separate once and for all. Put your ear to their quiet humming and the steady clickety-clack beneath the car. After all, it is the spinning wheel of life that is clicking and clacking away there.

Sometimes you stand under the hot gush for so long, looking at your body, counting every bruise. Touching every tender place. Watching the swirl at your feet, the glitter spinning. Like a mermaid shedding her scales. You’re really just trying to get your heart to slow “down. You think, This is my body, and I can make it do things. I can make it spin, flip, fly. After, you stand in front of the steaming mirror, the fuchsia streaks gone, the lashes unsparkled. And it’s just you there, and you look like no one you’ve ever seen before. You don’t look like anybody at all.

Then his lips caress mine. It’s only a brush, but the warmth overheats every part of me. Leaning back, my elbow bumps into the power button on the dryer and the old appliance starts moving. Spinning. Spinning like my head. Like my heart.

Inside him, twenty years dissolved and mixed into one complex, swirling whole. Everything that had accumulated over the years-- all he had seen, all the words he has spoken, all the values he had held-- all of it coalesced into one solid, thick pillar in his heart, the core of which was spinning like a potter's wheel. Wordlessly, Tengo observed the scene, as if watching the destruction and rebirth of a planet.

Little Fox. Two simple words. Only they did not feel simple at all. They felt like falling. They felt like hope. They felt like the most important words in the world. The words made her blood rush and her head spin until once again it was only her and Jacks. Nothing existed except for the press of his cool forehead, the feel of his strong hand tangling in her hair, and the pleading, broken look in his quicksilver blue eyes.

Weren’t you the one who said you see girls the same way we see party dresses, only to be used once?” “Clearly I view you a little differently.” He reached for one of her errant curls and wound it around one tattooed finger, the black rose on the back of his hand spinning until it turned red beneath the ruby starlight. With every turn he drew her closer. He made it easy to ignore her achy legs and her dying heart. He twisted the hair around his finger in the same way she imagined he wanted to wrap her around his finger. As if she would ever let him.

He spins around. Before I can say anything else, he steps forward and takes my face in his hands. Then he’s kissing me one last time, overwhelming me with his warmth, breathing life and love and aching sorrow into me. I throw my arms around his neck as he wraps his around my waist. My lips part for him and his mouth moves desperately against mine, devouring me, taking every breath that I have. Don’t go, I plead wordlessly. But I can taste the good-bye on his lips, and now I can no longer hold back my tears. He’s trembling. His face is wet. I hang on to him like he’ll disappear if I let go, like I’ll be left alone in this dark room, standing in the empty air. Day, the boy from the streets with nothing except the clothes on his back and the earnestness in his eyes, owns my heart.

Today I'll wear a dress made of sunlight, I'll spin like the lilies, I'll bloom like the stars. Hands hold, Hearts fold, Under my thumbprint sky.

Acknowledging that we are all churned up is the first and most difficult step in any practice. Without compassionate recognition that we are stuck, it’s impossible to liberate ourselves from confusion. ‘Doing something different’ is anything that interrupts our ancient habit of indulging in our emotions. We do anything to cut the strong tendency to spin out… Anything that’s non-habitual will do—even sing and dance or run around the block. We do anything that doesn’t reinforce our crippling habits. The third most difficult practice is to then remember that this is not something we do just once or twice. Interrupting our destructive habits and awakening our heart is the work of a lifetime.

It’s still yours, you know. It will never belong to anyone else. Not in this life, and not in the next thousand lives. You have my heart until the earth stops spinning and the stars turn to dust. You can love it or hate it or forget all about it. But it will always be yours.

I am a lover of love and I am a lover of words, and the two together spin visions of airy castles, but also may pierce the heart of hope. And so I remind you that I am a fool, a poet, and what matters is reality, not lovely words. Words are full of promise, yet empty of matter.

No matter how many movies you watch, songs you listen to, and friends you talk to, you will never understand heartbreak. You want to disappear, crying feels like bleeding, the world is spinning. You watch a movie you have seen ten times, a song you’ve listened to a hundred times and a friend you’ve been talking to for a thousand days and suddenly it’s like your hearing everything for the first time. For the first time you’ve opened your heart and your mind, you want to listen, you want to heal others. For the first time you feel destroyed. The word pain cannot do what you are feeling justice. It is beyond pain, beyond fury, beyond sadness. You feel everything but nothing at once. Shocked. Numb. Empty. But I had also felt compassion that day, empathy for a heart that I had once broke. Love for all of those who had not broken my heart. Appreciation for all of those who had mended hearts. Happiness for all who had secured their hearts. The day that I first met heartbreak, the day that I got my heart snatched away from me, happens to be the day that I first found my heart as well.

We are in this together. None of us truly walk in isolation, even when we cannot sense the presence of another for miles upon miles. Even in the worst of our desolation. Even during our coldest 3am breakdown. Even when we shut out the world and spin in circles until we collapse. Even then the light still gets in. Even then the heart still opens and reaches, tendrils of hope curling and bending toward slivers of light. Upward, outward, in all directions – seeking light at all cost. One way or another, we all grow toward the light.

Give up on me " he begged her. "I don't like people dropping in to see me without warning, I have forgotten the rules of seven tiles and kabaddi, I can't recite my prayers, I don't know what should happen at a nikah ceremony, and in this city where I grew up I get lost if I'm on my own. This isn't home. It makes me giddy because it feels like home and is not. It makes my heart tremble and my head spin." "You're a stupid, " she shouted at him. "A stupid. Change back! Damn fool! Of course you can." She was a vortex, a siren, tempting him back to his old self. But it was a dead self, a shadow, a ghost and he would not become a phantom. There was a return ticket to London in his wallet, and he was going to use it.

She put her arms around me again and we held each other for a long moment, her head on my shoulder, breath warm on my neck, and suddenly I wanted nothing more than to close all the little gaps that existed between our bodies, to collapse into one being. But then she pulled away and kissed my forehead and started back toward the others. I was too dazed to follow right away, because there was something new happening, a wheel inside my heart I’d never noticed before, and it was spinning so fast it made me dizzy. And the farther away she got, the faster it spun, like there was an invisible cord unreeling from it that stretched between us, and if she went too far it would snap—and kill me.

Because whenever anyone gets within a ten-foot radius of him, you go insane. Any time someone even dares to suggest there’s anyone in his life other than you, you go insane. Any time he’s not within touching distance, you go insane. And any time you think he’s falling away from you, that he’s not there, you go insane. You’ve put your whole life into him; what do you think that means, Jacob? How can you possibly explain that and not make it sound like he’s the axis your world spins on? Because if you can explain him away, and everything you feel for him away, then I’d like you to tell me how you function without a heart.

I know we’re supposed to spin terrible things to make it sound like they were actually good, but that’s bullshit. That heart attack did not save your life. Cancer is not a gift. Your abuser did not give you strength. Terrible things are terrible. Let’s just acknowledge it. If you found strength, wisdom, or a new way of thinking, that’s awesome, but notice that the strength, wisdom, and new worldview came out of you, which means it was all there inside you to begin with.

Normally death came at night, taking a person in their sleep, stopping their heart or tickling them awake, leading them to the bathroom with a splitting headache before pouncing and flooding their brain with blood. It waits in alleys and metro stops. After the sun goes down plugs are pulled by white-clad guardians and death is invited into an antiseptic room. But in the country death comes, uninvited, during the day. It takes fishermen in their longboats. It grabs children by the ankles as they swim. In winter it calls them down a slope too steep for their budding skills, and crosses their skies at the tips. It waits along the shore where snow met ice not long ago but now, unseen by sparkling eyes, a little water touches the shore, and the skater makes a circle slightly larger than intended. Death stands in the woods with a bow and arrow at dawn and dusk. And it tugs cars off the road in broad daylight, the tires spinning furiously on ice or snow, or bright autumn leaves.

A working woman, rising before dawn to spin and needing light in her cottage room, piles brushwood on a smoldering log, and the whole heap kindled by the little brand goes up in a mighty blaze. Such was the fire of Love, stealthy but all-consuming, that swept through Medea's heart. In the turmoil of her soul, her soft cheeks turned from rose to white and white to rose.

. . .To go as a river . .had taken me a long while to understand. . . meant. . .flowing forward against obstacle . . .like the river, I had also gathered along the way all the tiny pieces connecting me to everything else, and doing this had delivered me here, with two fists of forest soil in my palms and a heart still learning to be unafraid of itself. I had been shaped by my kindred— my lost family and lost love; my found friendships, though few; my trees that kept on living and every tree that gave me shelter; every creature I met along the way, every raindrop and snowflake choosing my shoulder, and every breeze that shifted the air; every winding path beneath my feet, every place I laid my hands and head, and every creek like the one before me, rolling off the hillside, gaining strength in gravity, spinning through the next eddy, pushing around the next bend, taking and giving in quiet agreement with every living thing.

It was the way your sweet, soft hands wiped away my tears, and the way your body just curved into mine when you let me hold you. It all made me feel, for just an instant, that everything really was going to be all right. No one has ever comforted me like that…except my mom.” What the fuck? Did I just say all that out loud? I shook my head furiously from side to side as the room started spinning me like a Tilt-a-Whirl at the county fair back home. Abby grabbed my shoulders to steady me. I blinked my eyes trying to focus on her blurry, but beautiful image. “Most of all, it’s that I want someone like you to want me—just for me, not for Jake Slater the singer of Runaway Train.” I smacked my hand hard against my chest. “For what’s really inside me.

My heart tells me to stop right here, to offer quiet benediction and call it the end. But the truth won't allow it. Because there is no end, happy or otherwise. Nothing is fixed, nothing solved. the facts, such as they are, finally spin off into the void of things missing, the inconclusiveness of us. Who are we? Where do we go? The ambiguity may be dissatisfying, even irritating, but this is a love story. There is no tidiness. Blame it on the human heart. One way or another, it seems, we all perform vanishing tricks, effacing history, locking up our lives and slipping day by day into the graying shadows. Our whereabouts are uncertain. All secrets lead to the dark, and beyond teh dark there is only maybe.

Sand rose into the air, spinning a maelstrom of protection against bullets. She looked up at him: his face contorted with concentration while the wind played with his dark hair. His arms tightened around her until she felt every contour of his body against hers. Her heart raced faster than the churning sand, and her breath was lost as if the vortex siphoned it.

Theres nothing more efficient than honesty and nothing more powerful than vulnerability because, vulnerability reveals everyone in your life who will abuse power immediately and almost irrevocably. Theres nothing weaker than hiding your vulnerability because, it means a refusal to stare at those who abuse power and see them for who they are which means they still have power and control over you. Nothing is stronger than vulnerability. Nothing more clarifying. Nothing is clearer than vulnerability, and if you hide who you are you are just making a tombstone of your everyday actions because you dont exist in hiding and you're letting the past rob you. Exercise the power of vulnerability. When you are vulnerable you are signaling to your system that the past is over and done! That you're no longer a victim! That you're no longer trapped in a destructive and abusive environment! vulnerability means it's over, it's done. The war is over but, if you continue to use the same defenses that you had in the past all you're telling your whole body is that the past is not over. Be vulnerable. Be honest. Be open and show your heart. That's the best way of telling your heart that the tigers are no longer in the grass. I'm telling you, just take it for a spin. Vulnerability and openness will get you what you want in your life and hiding will only get you the feeling of being prey from here until the end of your life.

The nauseating liquid choked the dog’s breathing and his head began to spin, then his legs collapsed and he seemed to be moving sideways. This is it, he thought dreamily as he collapsed on to the sharp slivers of glass. Goodbye, Moscow! I shan’t see Chichkin or the proletarians or Cracow sausages again. I’m going to the heaven for long-suffering dogs. You butchers – why did you have to do this to me? With that he finally collapsed on to his back and passed out.” Chapter 2

You ever put your arms out and spin really, really fast ? Well, that's what loves like. It makes your heart race. It turns the world upside down. But if you're not careful, if you don't keep your eyes on something still, you can lose your balance. You can't see what's happening to the people around you. You can't see your about to fall.

I love you,” I whispered into his suit. My words had life, and weight, and a pulse. I said them again. “I love you, Dad. I love you. I love you. I love you.” He lifted me up like I was a little girl, spinning me in place and burying his nose in my hair. Tears rolled down our faces. The pen bled the last of its ink, marking this page in our lives forever in my father’s office. I knew, with certainty that made my heart swell, that he was not going to replace that carpet. He was going to look at it every day, remember the day it had happened, and cherish it. “I love you, too, baby girl.

It doesn't matter what the manifest problem was in our childhood family. In a home where a child is emotionally deprived for one reason or another that child will take some personal emotional confusion into his or her adult life. We may spin our spiritual wheels in trying to make up for childhood's personal losses, looking for compensation in the wrong places and despairing that we can find it. But the significance of spiritual rebirth through Jesus Christ is that we can mature spiritually under His parenting and receive healing compensation for these childhood deprivations. Three emotions that often grow all out of proportion in the emotionally deprived child are fear, guilt, and anger. The fear grows out of the child's awareness of the uncontrollable nature of her fearful environment, of overwhelming negative forces around her. Her guilt, her profound feelings of inadequacy, intensify when she is unable to put right what is wrong, either in the environment or in another person, no matter how hard she tries to be good. If only she could try harder or be better, she could correct what is wrong, she thinks. She may carry this guilt all her life, not knowing where it comes from, but just always feeling guilty. She often feels too sorry for something she has done that was really not all that serious. Her anger comes from her frustration, perceived deprivation, and the resultant self-pity. She has picked up an anger habit and doesn't know how much trouble it is causing her. A fourth problem often follows in the wake of the big three: the need to control others and manipulate events in order to feel secure in her own world, to hold her world together- to make happen what she wants to happen. She thinks she has to run everything. She may enter adulthood with an illusion of power and a sense of authority to put other people right, though she has had little success with it. She thinks that all she has to do is try harder, be worthier, and then she can change, perfect, and save other people. But she is in the dark about what really needs changing."I thought I would drown in guilt and wanted to fix all the people that I had affected so negatively. But I learned that I had to focus on getting well and leave off trying to cure anyone around me." Many of those around - might indeed get better too, since we seldom see how much we are a key part of a negative relationship pattern. I have learned it is a true principle that I need to fix myself before I can begin to be truly helpful to anyone else. I used to think that if I were worthy enough and worked hard enough, and exercised enough anxiety (which is not the same thing as faith), I could change anything. My power and my control are illusions. To survive emotionally, I have to turn my life over to the care of that tender Heavenly Father who was really in charge. It is my own spiritual superficiality that makes me sick, and that only profound repentance, that real change of heart, would ultimately heal me. My Savior is much closer than I imagine and is willing to take over the direction of my life: "I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me, ye can do nothing." (John 15:5). As old foundations crumble, we feel terribly vulnerable. Humility, prayer and flexibility are the keys to passing through this corridor of healthy change while we experiment with truer ways of dealing with life. Godly knowledge, lovingly imparted, begins deep healing, gives tools to live by and new ways to understand the gospel.

At night, I rest on my couch and look to the sky. If the sky knew how much I adore you, it would give up its moon and keep you as love’s beacon in the heart of the sky. If the earth understood my love for you, it would stop spinning around itself and around the sun, and it would start to spin around you and rotate around my heart. But I am sure God knew how I would love you; that is why He created you.

What he liked about his brother, he said, is that he made people become what they didn't think they could become. He twisted something in their hearts. Gave them new places to go. Even dead, he'd still do that. His brother believed that the space for God was one of the last great frontiers: men and women could do all sorts of things but the real mystery would always lie in a different beyond. He would just fling the ashes and let them settle where they wanted.

I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp, and as a gasping person loves a glass of brandy to calm their nerves, and as a glass of brandy loves to shatter on the floor, and as the noise of glass shattering loves to make someone else gasp, and as someone else gasping loves a nearby desk to lean against, even if leaning against it presses a lever that loves to open a drawer and reveal a secret compartment. I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and until all the secrets have gone gasping into the world. I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled. I will love you until every fire is extinguished and until every home is rebuilt form the handsomest and most susceptible of woods, and until every criminal is handcuffed by the laziest of policemen. I will love you until M. hates snakes and J. hates grammar, and I will love you until C. realizes S. is not worthy of his love and N. realizes he is not worthy of the V. I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple, and until the apple hates a tree and the tree hates a nest, and until a bird hates a tree and an apple hates a nest, although honestly I cannot imagine that last occurrence no matter how hard I try. I will love you as we grow older, which has just happened, and has happened again, and happened several days ago, continuously, and then several years before that, and will continue to happen as the spinning hands of every clock and the flipping pages of every calendar mark the passage of time, except for the clocks that people have forgotten to wind and the calendars that people have forgotten to place in a highly visible area. I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where once we were so close that we could slip the curved straw, and the long, slender spoon, between our lips and fingers respectively. I will love you until the chances of us running into one another slip from skim to zero, and until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your memory faced by distant fog, and your fog memorized by a distant face, and your distance distanced by the memorized memory of a foggy fog. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, no matter where you avoid and who you don’t see, and no matter who sees you avoiding where you go. I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this, and no matter how I am discovered after what happens to me happens to me as I am discovering this. I will love you if you don’t marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else – your co-star, perhaps, or Y., or even O., or anyone Z. through A., even R. although sadly I believe it will be quite some time before two women can be allowed to marry – and I will love you if you have a child, and I will love you if you have two children, or three children, or even more, although I personally think three is plenty, and I will love you if you never marry at all, and never have children, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all, and I must say that on late, cold nights I prefer this scenario out of all the scenarios I have mentioned. That, Beatrice, is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.

He told me that everyone had a hidden door, which was the way into the heart, and that it was a point of honour with him to be able to find the handles to those doors. For the heart was both key and lock, and he who could master the hearts of men and learn their secrets was well on the way to mastering the Fates and controlling the thread of his own destiny. Not, he hastened to add, that any man can really do that. Not even the gods, he said, were more powerful than the Three Fatal Sisters. He did not mention them by name, but spat to avoid bad luck; and i shivered to think of them in their glum cave, spinning out lives, measuring them, cutting them off.

How could I explain to a beautiful lady in a silk dress that when I picked up her baby girl, I felt that lady's long-ago chubby shape in my arms, smelled her sunshine-touched hair? That years and years of tiny memories flitted past my heart like a flock of birds spinning on invisible air? It was the smell of the little girls, slightly wet, somewhat soapy, the smell of porridge supper, and the taste of kissed-away tears. Here in my arms were the best parts of life, going on, blooming like a strong tree.

The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine.

Off To The Races" My old man is a bad man but I can't deny the way he holds my hand And he grabs me, he has me by my heart He doesn't mind I have a Las Vegas past He doesn't mind I have an LA crass way about me He loves me with every beat of his cocaine heart Swimming pool glimmering darling White bikini off with my red nail polish Watch me in the swimming pool bright blue ripples you Sitting sipping on your black Cristal Oh yeah Light of my life, fire of my loins Be a good baby, do what I want Light of my life, fire of my loins Give me them gold coins, gimme them coins And I'm off to the races, cases of Bacardi chasers Chasing me all over town Cause he knows I'm wasted, facing Time again at Riker's Island and I won't get out Because I'm crazy, baby I need you to come here and save me I'm your little scarlet, starlet singing in the garden Kiss me on my open mouth Ready for you My old man is a tough man but He's got a soul as sweet as blood red jam And he shows me, he knows me Every inch of my tar black soul He doesn't mind I have a flat broke down life In fact he says he thinks it's why he might like about me Admires me, the way I roll like a Rolling Stone Likes to watch me in the glass room bathroom, Chateau Marmont Slippin' on my red dress, puttin' on my makeup Glass film, perfume, cognac, lilac Fumes, says it feels like heaven to him Light of his life, fire of his loins Keep me forever, tell me you own me Light of your life, fire of your loins Tell me you own me, gimme them coins And I'm off to the races, cases of Bacardi chasers Chasing me all over town Cause he knows I'm wasted, facing Time again at Riker's Island and I won't get out Because I'm crazy, baby I need you to come here and save me I'm your little scarlet, starlet singing in the garden Kiss me on my open mouth Now I'm off to the races, laces Leather on my waist is tight and I am fallin' down I can see your face is shameless, Cipriani's basement Love you but I'm going down God I'm so crazy, baby, I'm sorry that I'm misbehaving I'm your little harlot, starlet, Queen of Coney Island Raising hell all over town Sorry 'bout it My old man is a thief and I'm gonna stay and pray with him 'til the end But I trust in the decision of the Lord to watch over us Take him when he may, if he may I'm not afraid to say that I'd die without him Who else is gonna put up with me this way? I need you, I breathe you, I never leave you They would rue the day I was alone without you You're lying with your gold chain on, cigar hanging from your lips I said "Hon' you never looked so beautiful as you do now, my man." And we're off to the races, places Ready, set the gate is down and now we're goin' in To Las Vegas chaos, Casino Oasis, honey it is time to spin Boy you're so crazy, baby, I love you forever not maybe You are my one true love, you are my one true love You are my one true love

Lo!" I said. "I arrived at Camp Half-Blood as Lester Papadopoulos!" "A pathetic mortal!" Calypso chorused. "Most worthless of teens!" I glared at her, but I didn't dare stop my performance again. "I overcame many challenges with my companion, Meg McCaffrey!" "He means his master!" Calypso added. "A twelve-year-old girl! Behold her pathetic slave, Lester, most worthless of teens!" The policeman huffed impatiently. "We know all this. The emperor told us." "Shh," said Nanette. "Be polite." I put my hand over my heart. "We secured the Grove of Dodona, an ancient Oracle, and thwarted the plans of Nero! But, alas, Meg McCaffrey fled from me. Her evil stepfather had poisoned her mind!" "Poison!" Calypso cried. "Like the breath of Lester Papadopoulos, most worthless of teens!" I resisted the urge to push Calypso into the flower bed. Meanwhile, Leo was making his way towards the bulldozer under the guise of an interpretive dance routine, spinning and gasping and pantomiming my words. He looked like a hallucinating ballerina in boxer shorts, but the blemmyae politely got out of his way. "Lo!" I shouted. "From the Oracle of Dodona we received a prophecy - a limerick most terrible!" "Terrible!" Calypso chorused. "Like the skills of Lester, most worthless of teens!" "Vary your adjectives," I grumbled, then continued for my audience: "We travelled west in search of another Oracle, along the way fighting many fearsome foes! The Cyclopes we brought low!

You've become a queen, a woman with a complicated personality. You have hidden depths and a wisdom and intelligence that all went unnoticed before by an idiot prince whose heart couldn't listen to anything his ears couldn't hear." Ariel felt a little giddy. "I control storms and the heart of a prince. I like that." If she were in the sea she would have been swooning, thrashing her tail and spinning in circles until she was dizzy.

Stick out your arms," he'd say, "straight out at your sides," and when he had you in the appropriate cruciform position he'd say, "Left index finger to right index finger straight across your heart, that's the history of the Earth. You know what human history is? Human history is the nail on your right-hand index finger. Not even the whole nail. Just that little white part. The part you clip off when it gets too long. That's the discovery of fire and the invention of writing and Galileo and Newton and the moon landing and 9/11 and last week and this morning. Compared to evolution we're newborns. Compared to geology, we barely exist

Lucky" (feat. Colbie Caillat) Do you hear me, I'm talking to you Across the water across the deep blue ocean Under the open sky, oh my, baby I'm trying Boy I hear you in my dreams I feel your whisper across the sea I keep you with me in my heart You make it easier when life gets hard I'm lucky I'm in love with my best friend Lucky to have been where I have been Lucky to be coming home again Ooohh ooooh oooh oooh ooh ooh ooh ooh They don't know how long it takes Waiting for a love like this Every time we say goodbye I wish we had one more kiss I'll wait for you I promise you, I will I'm lucky I'm in love with my best friend Lucky to have been where I have been Lucky to be coming home again Lucky we're in love every way Lucky to have stayed where we have stayed Lucky to be coming home someday And so I'm sailing through the sea To an island where we'll meet You'll hear the music fill the air I'll put a flower in your hair Though the breezes through trees Move so pretty you're all I see As the world keeps spinning round You hold me right here right now I'm lucky I'm in love with my best friend Lucky to have been where I have been Lucky to be coming home again I'm lucky we're in love every way Lucky to have stayed where we have stayed Lucky to be coming home someday

Love is the great intangible. In our nightmares, we can create beasts out of pure emotion. Hate stalks the streets with dripping fangs, fear flies down narrow alleyways on leather wings, and jealousy spins sticky webs across the sky. In daydreams, we can maneuver with poise, foiling an opponent, scoring high on fields of glory while crowds cheer, cutting fast to the heart of an adventure. But what dream state is love? Frantic and serene, vigilant and calm, wrung-out and fortified, explosive and sedate –love commands a vast army of moods. Hoping for victory, limping from the latest skirmish, lovers enter the arena once again. Sitting still, we are as daring as gladiators.

Star salt (the stars’ reflection in a river) Sun cradle (the sea) Lemon kiss (everyone knew exactly what this meant!) Family anchor (the dinner table) Heart notcher (your first lover) Veil of time (you spin around in the sandpit to find you are old and wet your pants when you laugh) Dreamside Wishableness This last word was Samy’s new favorite. “We all live in wishableness,” she said. “Each in a different kind.

But then she pulled away and kissed my forehead and started back toward the others. I was too dazed to follow right away, because there was something new happening, a wheel inside my heart I’d never noticed before, and it was spinning so fast it made me dizzy. And the farther away she got, the faster it spun, like there was an invisible cord unreeling from it that stretched between us, and if she went too far it would snap—and kill me. I wondered if this strange, sweet pain was love.

women in the world will have been beaten or raped in their lifetime and everyday violence requires that women always be alert to this possibility. A crone is a woman who has found her voice. She knows that silence is consent. This is a quality that makes older women feared. It is not the innocent voice of a child who says, “the emperor has no clothes,” but the fierce truthfulness of the crone that is the voice of reality. Both the innocent child and the crone are seeing through the illusions, denials, or “spin” to the truth. But the crone knows about the deception and its consequences, and it angers her. Her fierceness springs from the heart, gives her courage, makes her a force to be reckoned with.

Turn from that road's beguiling ease; return to your hunger's turret. Enter, climb the stair chill with disuse, where the croaking toad of time regards from shimmering eyes your slow ascent and the drip, drip, of darkness glimmers on the stone to show you how your longing waits alone. What alchemy shines from under that shut door, spinning out gold from the hollow of the heart? ("The Sea's Wash In The Hollow Of The Heart")

Here are the sounds of Wear. It rattles stone on stone. It sucks its teeth. It sings. It hisses like the rain. It roars. It laughs. It claps its hands. Sometimes I think it prays. In winter, through the ice, I've seen it moving swift and black as Tune, without a sound. Here are the sights of Wear. It falls in braids. It parts at rocks and tumbles round them white as down or flashes over them in silver quilts. It tosses fallen trees like bits of straw yet spins a single leaf as gentle as a maid. Sometimes it coils for rest in darkling pools and sometimes it leaps its banks and shatters in the air. In autumn, I've seen it breathe a mist so thick and grey you'd never know old Wear was there at all. Each day, for years and years, I've gone and sat in it. Usually at dusk I clamber down and slowly sink myself to where it laps against my breast. Is it too much to say, in winter, that I die? Something of me dies at least. First there's the fiery sting of cold that almost stops my breath, the aching torment in my limbs. I think I may go mad, my wits so outraged that they seek to flee my skull like rats a ship that's going down. I puff. I gasp. Then inch by inch a blessed numbness comes. I have no legs, no arms. My very heart grows still. These floating hands are not my hands. The ancient flesh I wear is rags for all I feel of it. "Praise, Praise!" I croak. Praise God for all that's holy, cold, and dark. Praise him for all we lose, for all the river of the years bears off. Praise him for stillness in the wake of pain. Praise him for emptiness. And as you race to spill into the sea, praise him yourself, old Wear. Praise him for dying and the peace of death. In the little church I built of wood for Mary, I hollowed out a place for him. Perkin brings him by the pail and pours him in. Now that I can hardly walk, I crawl to meet him there. He takes me in his chilly lap to wash me of my sins. Or I kneel down beside him till within his depths I see a star. Sometimes this star is still. Sometimes she dances. She is Mary's star. Within that little pool of Wear she winks at me. I wink at her. The secret that we share I cannot tell in full. But this much I will tell. What's lost is nothing to what's found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup.

If you really wanted to court me, you'd have to do it by my family's laws, and you'd have to marry me the same way." I said, and folded my arms, knowing that would be the end of it, of course. And I wasn't sorry; I wouldn't be. I wouldn't regret any man who wouldn't do that, no matter what else he was or offered me; that much had lived in my heart all my life, a promise between me and my people, that my children would still be Israel no matter where they lived. Even if in some sneaking corner of my mind I might have thought, once or twice, for only a moment, that it would be worth something to have a husband who'd sooner slit his own throat than ever lie to you or cheat you. But not if he didn't value you at least as high as his pride. I wouldn't hold myself that cheap, to marry a man who'd love me less than everything else he had, even if what he had was a winter kingdom.

There are men who are wolves inside, and want to eat up other people to fill their bellies. That it what was in your house with you, all your life. But here you are with your brothers, and you are not eaten up, and there is not a wolf inside you. You have fed each other, and you kept the wolf away. That is all we can do for each other in the world, to keep the wolf away. And if there has been food in my house for you, then I am glad, glad with all my heart. I hope there will always be.

The bicycle saves my life every day. If you've ever experienced a moment of awe or freedom on a bicycle; if you've ever taken flight from sadness to the rhythm of two spinning wheels, or felt the resurgence of hope pedalling to the top of a hill with the dew of effort on your forehead; if you've ever wondered, swooping down bird-like down a long hill, if the world was standing still; if you have ever, just once, sat on a bicycle with a singing heart and felt like an ordinary human touching the gods, then we share something fundamental. We know it's all about the bike.

Emerson lifts his head. His eyes are two dark pools of desire, a clouded night’s sky. He catches his breath a moment, unsteady, and then drops a kiss on my lips. Sweet. Almost tender. I barely have time to take it in before he grabs my shoulder and spins me around, pushing me so my bare chest is slammed up into the wall, my cheek pressed against the cold concrete. I gasp, my heart skipping with the thrill. I can feel him up against me, a solid wall of muscle trapping me in place, the hard ridge of him pressed against the small of my back. I can’t move, or see the expression on his face, only hear the hoarse groan Emerson sounds as he twists a handful of my hair and yanks it to one side, kissing a searing trail along the curve of my neck. I whimper, bound and powerless against him, and oh God, loving every minute of it.

Wait,” Kaidan called from behind me. I squeezed my eyes shut for a second, but kept walking. Then I felt his hand around my wrist, spinning me in a half circle and pulling me to his chest. His face was so close. He reached down and cupped my face with one woolly hand, and wiped the top corner of my lip hard with his thumb. I flinched back. “What are you doing?” “I...” He appeared to have no idea himself. “I wanted to see your freckle.” A vulnerable tenderness flashed across his face, more painful to see than the coldness. It took every ounce of strength I had not to beg for one last kiss. As fast as his expression had softened, it was back to stone again. “What do you want from me, Kai?” “For starters?” His voice lowered to sexy, dangerous depths. “I want to introduce myself to every freckle on your body.” A powerful shiver ripped through me. “So, just something physical, then?” I clarified. “That's all you want?” “Tell me you hate me,” he demanded. I felt the air of his words against my face. “But I don't hate you. I couldn't.” “You could,” he assured me, pulling me tighter. “And you should.” “I'm letting you go.” My voice shook. “But only because I have to. I need to move on with my life, but I'll never hate you.” “The one who got away,” Kaidan murmured. “Nobody got away,” I corrected him. “And so help me, if you start comparing us to an unfinished game that went into overtime-” He released me and I stumbled back a step. I had to get away before I started clinging and begging him to admit his feelings, whatever they might have been. It was necessary to rip off this Band-Aid, and fast. So, as I'd done at the airport, I walked away from him, dragging my heart behind me. I didn't look back. Game over.

I know a charm that can cure pain and sickness, and lift the grief from the heart of the grieving. I know a charm that will heal with a touch. I know a charm that will turn aside the weapons of an enemy. I know another charm to free myself from all bonds and locks. A fifth charm: I can catch an arrow in flight and take no harm from it. A sixth: spells sent to hurt me will hurt only the sender. A seventh charm I know: I can quench a fire simply by looking at it. An eighth: if any man hates me, I can win his friendship. A ninth: I can sing the wind to sleep and calm a storm for long enough to bring a ship to shore. For a tenth charm, I learned to dispel witches, to spin them around in the skies so that they will never find their way back to their own doors again. An eleventh: if I sing it when a battle rages it can take warriors through the tumult unscathed and unhurt, and bring them safely back to their hearths and their homes. A twelfth charm I know: if I see a hanged man I can bring him down from the gallows to whisper to us all he remembers. A thirteenth: if I sprinkle water on a child’s head, that child will not fall in battle. A fourteenth: I know the names of all the gods. Every damned one of them. A fifteenth: I had a dream of power, of glory, and of wisdom, and I can make people believe in my dreams. A sixteenth charm I know: if I need love I can turn the mind and heart of any woman. A seventeenth, that no woman I want will ever want another. And I know an eighteenth charm, and that charm is the greatest of all, and that charm I can tell to no man, for a secret that no one know but you is the most powerful secret there can ever be.

Later, at the sink in our van, Mama rinsed the blue stain and the odd spiders, caterpillars, and stems from the bucket. "Not what we usually start with, but we can go again tomorrow. And this will set up nicely in about six, eight jars." The berries were beginning to simmer in the big pot on the back burner. Mama pushed her dark wooden spoon into the foaming berries and cicrcled the wall of the pot slowly. I leaned my hot arms on the table and said, "Iphy better not go tomorrow. She got tired today." I was smelling the berries and Mamaa's sweat, and watching the flex of the blue veins behind her knees. "Does them good. The twins always loved picking berries, even more than eating them. Though Elly likes her jam." "Elly doesn't like anything anymore." The knees stiffened and I looked up. The spoon was motionless. Mama stared at the pot. "Mama, Elly isn't there anymore. Iphy's changed. Everything's changed. This whole berry business, cooking big meals that nobody comes for, birthday cakes for Arty. It's dumb, Mama. Stop pretending. There isn't any family anymore, Mama." Then she cracked me with the big spoon. It smacked wet and hard across my ear, and the purple-black juice spayed across the table. She started at me, terrified, her mouth and eyes gaping with fear. I stared gaping at her. I broke and ran. I went to the generator truck and climbed up to sit by Grandpa. That's the only time Mama ever hit me and I knew I deserved it. I also knew that Mama was too far gone to understand why I deserved it. She'd swung that spoon in a tigerish reflex at blasphemy. But I believed that Arty had turned his back on us, that the twins were broken, that the Chick was lost, that Papa was weak and scared, that Mama was spinning fog, and that I was an adolescent crone sitting in the ruins, watching the beams crumble, and warming myself in the smoke from the funeral pyre. That was how I felt, and I wanted company. I hated Mama for refusing to see enough to be miserable with me. Maybe, too, enough of my child heart was still with me to think that if she would only open her eyes she could fix it all back up like a busted toy.

My vagina was green water, soft pink fields, cow mooing sun resting sweet boyfriend touching lightly with soft piece of blond straw. There is something between my legs. I do not know what it is. I do not know where it is. I do not touch. Not now. Not anymore. Not since. My vagina was chatty, can't wait, so much, so much saying, words talking, can't quit trying, can't quit saying, oh yes, oh yes. Not since I dream there's a dead animal sewn in down there with thick black fishing line. And the bad dead animal smell cannot be removed. And its throat is slit and it bleeds through all my summer dresses. My vagina singing all girl songs, all goat bells ringing songs, all wild autumn field songs, vagina songs, vagina home songs. Not since the soldiers put a long thick rifle inside me. So cold, the steel rod canceling my heart. Don't know whether they're going to fire it or shove it through my spinning brain. Six of them, monstrous doctors with black masks shoving bottles up me too. There were sticks, and the end of a broom. My vagina swimming river water, clean spilling water over sun-baked stones over stone clit, clit stones over and over. Not since I heard the skin tear and made lemon screeching sounds, not since a piece of my vagina came off in my hand, a part of the lip, now one side of the lip is completely gone. My vagina. A live wet water village. My vagina my hometown. Not since they took turns for seven days smelling like feces and smoked meat, they left their dirty sperm inside me. I became a river of poison and pus and all the crops died, and the fish. My vagina a live wet water village. They invaded it. Butchered it and burned it down. I do not touch now. Do not visit. I live someplace else now. I don't know where that is.

I take a deep breath, relishing in the fresh air and open space around me. Something wet splatters on my cheek, and I turn my face toward the cloudy sky that is now beginning to drizzle down on me. I spread out my arms and tilt my head up, loving the feel of rain pelting my skin. The the drizzle turns into a downpour. Rain is falling rapidly while I'm smiling stupidly. My head feels clearer than it has in days as cool water coats my skin, my dress, my hair. I spin in place, the skirts of my gown swishing around my ankles, feeling like an idiot and absolutely loving it. I slip the shoes from my aching feet and pad through puddles like I did as a little girl, reminding me of a time when I was younger... Laughter bubbles out of me. Hysterical. I am completely hysterical. Rain is sticking strands of hair to my face and dripping down the tip of my nose while I smile through it all, momentarily forgetting about my troubles and simply taking a moment to exist. "I don't know that I ever lived before lying eyes on the likes of you." I spin, blinking through the steady stream of rain before my eyes find the gray ones blending in with the sheet of water falling down on us. His hair is dripping wet, all wavy and tousled. His white button-down shirt is sticky and see-through, showing off an inked chest and tanned torso beneath. And the sight of him has me smiling. "oh, but I only have eyes for one little lady, and I can't seem to take them off of her." His chest is rising and falling just as rapidly as the rain while my heart is thundering just as loudly as the storm.

Silence is another element we find in classic fairy tales — girls muted by magic or sworn to silence in order to break enchantment. In "The Wild Swans," a princess is imprisoned by her stepmother, rolled in filth, then banished from home (as her older brothers had been before her). She goes in search of her missing brothers, discovers that they've been turned into swans, whereupon the young girl vows to find a way to break the spell. A mysterious woman comes to her in a dream and tells her what to do: 'Pick the nettles that grow in graveyards, crush and spin them into thread, then weave them into coats and throw them over your brothers' backs.' The nettles burn and blister, yet she never falters: picking, spinning, weaving, working with wounded, crippled hands, determined to save her brothers. All this time she's silent. 'You must not speak,' the dream woman has warned, 'for a single world will be like a knife plunged into your brothers' hearts.' You must not speak. That's what my stepfather said: don't speak, don't cry, don't tell. That's what my mother said as well, as we sat in hospital waiting rooms -- and I obeyed, as did my brothers. We sat as still and silent as stone while my mother spun false tales to explain each break and bruise and burn. Our family moved just often enough that her stories were fresh and plausible; each new doctor believed her, and chided us children to be more careful. I never contradicted those tales. I wouldn't have dared, or wanted to. They'd send me into foster care. They'd send my young brothers away. And so we sat, and the unspoken truth was as sharp as the point of a knife.

The Chorus Line: The Birth of Telemachus, An Idyll Nine months he sailed the wine-red seas of his mother's blood Out of the cave of dreaded Night, of sleep, Of troubling dreams he sailed In his frail dark boat, the boat of himself, Through the dangerous ocean of his vast mother he sailed From the distant cave where the threads of men's lives are spun, Then measured, and then cut short By the Three Fatal Sisters, intent on their gruesome handcrafts, And the lives of women also are twisted into the strand. And we, the twelve who were later to die by his hand At his father's relentless command, Sailed as well, in the dark frail boats of ourselves Through the turbulent seas of our swollen and sore-footed mothers Who were not royal queens, but a motley and piebald collection, Bought, traded, captured, kidnapped from serfs and strangers. After the nine-month voyage we came to shore, Beached at the same time as he was, struck by the hostile air, Infants when he was an infant, wailing just as he wailed, Helpless as he was helpless, but ten times more helpless as well, For his birth was longed-for and feasted, as our births were not. His mother presented a princeling. Our various mothers Spawned merely, lambed, farrowed, littered, Foaled, whelped and kittened, brooded, hatched out their clutch. We were animal young, to be disposed of at will, Sold, drowned in the well, traded, used, discarded when bloomless. He was fathered; we simply appeared, Like the crocus, the rose, the sparrows endangered in mud. Our lives were twisted in his life; we also were children When he was a child, We were his pets and his toythings, mock sisters, his tiny companions. We grew as he grew, laughed also, ran as he ran, Though sandier, hungrier, sun-speckled, most days meatless. He saw us as rightfully his, for whatever purpose He chose, to tend him and feed him, to wash him, amuse him, Rock him to sleep in the dangerous boats of ourselves. We did not know as we played with him there in the sand On the beach of our rocky goat-island, close by the harbour, That he was foredoomed to swell to our cold-eyed teenaged killer. If we had known that, would we have drowned him back then? Young children are ruthless and selfish: everyone wants to live. Twelve against one, he wouldn't have stood a chance. Would we? In only a minute, when nobody else was looking? Pushed his still-innocent child's head under the water With our own still-innocent childish nursemaid hands, And blamed it on waves. Would we have had it in us? Ask the Three Sisters, spinning their blood-red mazes, Tangling the lives of men and women together. Only they know how events might then have had altered. Only they know our hearts. From us you will get no answer.

Evie stayed, however, the silence spinning out until it seemed that the pounding of his heart must be audible. “Do you want to know what I think, Sebastian?” she finally asked. It took every particle of his will to keep his voice controlled. “Not particularly.” “I think that if I leave this room, you’re going to ring that bell again. But no matter how many times you ring, or how often I come running, you’ll never bring yourself to tell me what you really want.” Sebastian slitted his eyes open…a mistake. Her face was very close, her soft mouth only inches from his. “At the moment, all I want is some peace,” he grumbled. “So if you don’t mind—” Her lips touched his, warm silk and sweetness, and he felt the dizzying brush of her tongue. A floodgate of desire opened, and he was drowning in undiluted pleasure, more powerful than anything he had known before. He lifted his hands as if to push her head away, but instead his trembling fingers curved around her skull, holding her to him. The fiery curls of her hair were compressed beneath his palms as he kissed her with ravenous urgency, his tongue searching the winsome delight of her mouth. Sebastian was mortified to discover that he was gasping like an untried boy when Evie ended the kiss. Her lips were rosy and damp, her freckles gleaming like gold dust against the deep pink of her cheeks. “I also think,” she said unevenly, “that you’re going to lose our bet.” Recalled to sanity by a flash of indignation, Sebastian scowled. “Do you think I’m in any condition to pursue other women? Unless you intend to bring someone to my bed, I’m hardly going to—” “You’re not going to lose the bet by sleeping with another woman,” Evie said. There was a glitter of deviltry in her eyes as she reached up to the neckline of her gown and deliberately began to unfasten the row of buttons. Her hands trembled just a little. “You’re going to lose it with me.” Sebastian watched incredulously as she stood and shed the dressing gown. She was naked, the tips of her breasts pointed and rosy in the cool air. She had lost weight, but her breasts were still round and lovely, and her hips still flared generously from the neat inward curves of her waist. As his gaze swept to the triangle of red hair between her thighs, a swell of acute lust rolled through him. He sounded shaken, even to his own ears. “You can’t make me lose the bet. That’s cheating.” “I never promised not to cheat,” Evie said cheerfully, shivering as she slipped beneath the covers with him. “Damn it, I’m not going to cooperate. I—” His breath hissed between his teeth as he felt the tender length of her body press against his side, the springy brush of her private curls on his hip as she slid one of her legs between his. He jerked his head away as she tried to kiss him. “I can’t…Evie…” His mind searched cagily for a way to dissuade her. “I’m too weak.” Ardent and determined, Evie grasped his head and turned his face to hers. “Poor darling,” she murmured, smiling. “Don’t worry. I’ll be gentle with you.” “Evie,” he said hoarsely, aroused and infuriated and pleading, “I have to prove that I can last three months without—no, don’t do that. Damn you, Evie—

Every generation of children instinctively nests itself in nature, no matter matter how tiny a scrap of it they can grasp. In a tale of one city child, the poet Audre Lord remembers picking tufts of grass which crept up through the paving stones in New York City and giving them as bouquets to her mother. It is a tale of two necessities. The grass must grow, no matter the concrete suppressing it. The child must find her way to the green, no matter the edifice which would crush it. "The Maori word for placenta is the same word for land, so at birth the placenta is buried, put back in the mothering earth. A Hindu baby may receive the sun-showing rite surya-darsana when, with conch shells ringing to the skies, the child is introduced to the sun. A newborn child of the Tonga people 'meets' the moon, dipped in the ocean of Kosi Bay in KwaZulu-Natal. Among some of the tribes of India, the qualities of different aspects of nature are invoked to bless the child, so he or she may have the characteristics of earth, sky and wind, of birds and animals, right down to the earthworm. Nothing is unbelonging to the child. "'My oldest memories have the flavor of earth,' wrote Frederico García Lorca. In the traditions of the Australian deserts, even from its time in the womb, the baby is catscradled in kinship with the world. Born into a sandy hollow, it is cleaned with sand and 'smoked' by fire, and everything -- insects, birds, plants, and animals -- is named to the child, who is told not only what everything is called but also the relationship between the child and each creature. Story and song weave the child into the subtle world of the Dreaming, the nested knowledge of how the child belongs. "The threads which tie the child to the land include its conception site and the significant places of the Dreaming inherited through its parents. Introduced to creatures and land features as to relations, the child is folded into the land, wrapped into country, and the stories press on the child's mind like the making of felt -- soft and often -- storytelling until the feeling of the story of the country is impressed into the landscape of the child's mind. "That the juggernaut of ants belongs to a child, belligerently following its own trail. That the twitch of an animal's tail is part of a child's own tale or storyline, once and now again. That on the papery bark of a tree may be written the songline of a child's name. That the prickles of a thornbush may have dynamic relevance to conscience. That a damp hollow by the riverbank is not an occasional place to visit but a permanent part of who you are. This is the beginning of belonging, the beginning of love. "In the art and myth of Indigenous Australia, the Ancestors seeded the country with its children, so the shimmering, pouring, circling, wheeling, spinning land is lit up with them, cartwheeling into life.... "The human heart's love for nature cannot ultimately be concreted over. Like Audre Lord's tufts of grass, will crack apart paving stones to grasp the sun. Children know they are made of the same stuff as the grass, as Walt Whitman describes nature creating the child who becomes what he sees: There was a child went forth every day And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became... The early lilacs became part of this child... And the song of the phoebe-bird... In Australia, people may talk of the child's conception site as the origin of their selfhood and their picture of themselves. As Whitman wrote of the child becoming aspects of the land, so in Northern Queensland a Kunjen elder describes the conception site as 'the home place for your image.' Land can make someone who they are, giving them fragments of themselves.

The heartwood," Rob murmured, looking at me. "You wanted to marry me in the heart of Major Oak." I beamed at him grateful that he understood. "And Scar," he whispered. I leaned in close. "Are you wearing knives to our wedding?" Nodding, I laughed, telling him, "I was going to get you here one way or another, Hood." He laughed, a bright, merry sound. Standing in the heart of the tree, he reached again for my hand, fingers sliding over mine. Touching his hand, a rope of lightening lashed round my fingers, like it seared us together. Now, and for always. His fingers moved on mine, rubbing over my hand before capturing it tight and turning me to the priest. The priest looked over his shoulder, watching as the sun began to dip. He led us in prayer, he asked me to speak the same words I'd spoken not long past to Gisbourne, but that whole thing felt like a bad dream, like I were waking and it were fading and gone for good. "Lady Scarlet." he asked me with a smile, "known to some as Lady Marian of Huntingdon, will thou have this lord to thy wedded husband, will thou love him and honour him, keep him and obey him, in health and in sickness, as a wife should a husband, forsaking all others on account of him, so long as ye both shall live?" I looked at Robin, tears burning in my eyes. "I will," I promised. "I will, always." Rob's face were beaming back at me, his ocean eyes shimmering bright. The priest smiled. "Robin of Locksley, will thou have this lady to thy wedded wife, will thou love her and honor her, keep her and guard her, in health and in sickness, as a husband should a wife, forsaking all others on account of her, so long as ye both shall live?" the priest asked. "Yes," Rob said. "I will." "You have the rings?" the priest asked Rob. "I do," I told the priest, taking two rings from where Bess had tied them to my dress. I'd sent Godfrey out to buy them at market without Rob knowing. "I knew you weren't planning on this," I told him. Rob just grinned like a fool at me, taking the ring I handed him to put on my finger. Laughs bubbled up inside of me, and I felt like I were smiling so wide something were stuck in my cheeks and holding me open. More shy and proud than I thought I'd be, I said. "I take you as me wedded husband, Robin. And thereto I plight my troth." I pushed the ring onto his finger. He took my half hand in one of his, but the other- holding the ring- went into his pocket. "I may not have known I would marry you today Scar," he said. "But I did know I would marry you." He showed me a ring, a large ruby set in delicate gold. "This," he said to me, "was my mother's. It's the last thing I have of hers, and when I met you and loved you and realized your name was the exact colour of the stone- " He swallowed, and cleared his throat, looking at me with the blue eyes that shot right through me. "This was meant to be Scarlet. I was always meant to love you. To marry you." The priest coughed. "Say the words, my son, and you will marry her." Rob grinned and I laughed, and Rob stepped closer, cradling my hand. "I take you as my wedded wife, Scarlet. And thereto I plight my troth." He slipped the ring on my finger and it fit. "Receive the Holy Spirit," the priest said, and kissed Robin on the cheek. Rob's happy grin turned a touch wolflike as he turned back to me, hauling me against him and angling his mouth over mine. I wrapped my arms around him and my head spun- I couldn't tell if we were spinning, if I were dizzy, if my feet were on the ground anymore at all, but all I knew, all I cared for, were him, his mouth against mine, and letting the moment we became man and wife spin into eternity.