The Soul Spill Quotes

Colpo di fulmine. The thunderbolt, as Italians call it. When love strikes someone like lightning, so powerful and intense it can’t be denied. It’s beautiful and messy, cracking a chest open and spilling their soul out for the world to see. It turns a person inside out, and there’s no going back from it. Once the thunderbolt hits, your life is irrevocably changed.

I'm watching her talk. Watching her jaw move and collecting her words one by one as they spill from her lips. I don't deserve them. Her warm memories. I'd like to paint them over the bare plaster walls of my soul, but everything I paint seems to peel.

I too love everything that flows: rivers, sewers, lava, semen, blood, bile, words, sentences. I love the amniotic fluid when it spills out of the bag. I love the kidney with it’s painful gall-stones, it’s gravel and what-not; I love the urine that pours out scalding and the clap that runs endlessly; I love the words of hysterics and the sentences that flow on like dysentery and mirror all the sick images of the soul...

What does "true" even mean when it comes to a face? Only souls are true, and when you spill them to the air they melt away ...

Some thought magic came from the mind, others the soul, or the heart, or the will. But Kell knew it came from the blood. Blood was magic made manifest. There it thrived. And there it poisoned. Kell had seen what happened when power warred with the body, watched it darken in the veins of corrupted men, turning their blood from crimson to black. If red was the color of magic in balance—of harmony between power and humanity—then black was the color of magic without balance, without order, without restraint. As an Antari, Kell was made of both, balance and chaos; the blood in his veins, like the Isle of Red London, ran a shimmering, healthy crimson, while his right eye was the color of spilled ink, a glistening black.

believe that this way of living, this focus on the present, the daily, the tangible, this intense concentration not on the news headlines but on the flowers growing in your own garden, the children growing in your own home, this way of living has the potential to open up the heavens, to yield a glittering handful of diamonds where a second ago there was coal. This way of living and noticing and building and crafting can crack through the movie sets and soundtracks that keep us waiting for our own life stories to begin, and set us free to observe the lives we have been creating all along without ever realizing it. I don’t want to wait anymore. I choose to believe that there is nothing more sacred or profound than this day. I choose to believe that there may be a thousand big moments embedded in this day, waiting to be discovered like tiny shards of gold. The big moments are the daily, tiny moments of courage and forgiveness and hope that we grab on to and extend to one another. That’s the drama of life, swirling all around us, and generally I don’t even see it, because I’m too busy waiting to become whatever it is I think I am about to become. The big moments are in every hour, every conversation, every meal, every meeting. The Heisman Trophy winner knows this. He knows that his big moment was not when they gave him the trophy. It was the thousand times he went to practice instead of going back to bed. It was the miles run on rainy days, the healthy meals when a burger sounded like heaven. That big moment represented and rested on a foundation of moments that had come before it. I believe that if we cultivate a true attention, a deep ability to see what has been there all along, we will find worlds within us and between us, dreams and stories and memories spilling over. The nuances and shades and secrets and intimations of love and friendship and marriage an parenting are action-packed and multicolored, if you know where to look. Today is your big moment. Moments, really. The life you’ve been waiting for is happening all around you. The scene unfolding right outside your window is worth more than the most beautiful painting, and the crackers and peanut butter that you’re having for lunch on the coffee table are as profound, in their own way, as the Last Supper. This is it. This is life in all its glory, swirling and unfolding around us, disguised as pedantic, pedestrian non-events. But pull of the mask and you will find your life, waiting to be made, chosen, woven, crafted. Your life, right now, today, is exploding with energy and power and detail and dimension, better than the best movie you have ever seen. You and your family and your friends and your house and your dinner table and your garage have all the makings of a life of epic proportions, a story for the ages. Because they all are. Every life is. You have stories worth telling, memories worth remembering, dreams worth working toward, a body worth feeding, a soul worth tending, and beyond that, the God of the universe dwells within you, the true culmination of super and natural. You are more than dust and bones. You are spirit and power and image of God. And you have been given Today.

...I deliberately spilled the black ink of despair because my perfect soul was a stained glass illusion - can you understand that?...

Everywhere I go, your beauty spills into my day. The trees were never this verdant. The birdsong never this sweet.

Millions cheer the warrior spilling blood across the ring while the one who stands for peace is ridiculed and shamed. Must hearts forever suffer from ignorance and greed? Can bombs heal our souls or set our spirits free?

Heavily and hypnotically,with her soul flattening itself back like the ears of a hissing cat,Kizzy leaned in and drank of Jack Husk's full,moist mouth,and his red,red lips were hungry against hers,drinking her in return.Their eyes closed.Fingers clutched at collars and hair,at the picnic blanket,at the grass.And as they sank down,pinning their shadows beneath them,the horizon tipped on its side,and slowly,thickly,hour by hour,the day spilled out and ebbed away. It was Kizzy's first kiss, and maybe it was her last, and it was delicious.

I love words.  I crave descriptions that overwhelm my imagination with vivid detail.  I dwell on phrases that make my heart thrum.  I cherish expressions that pierce my emotions and force the tears to spill over.   In essence, I long for a writer's soul sealed in ink on the page.

Had I ever loved anyone more than I loved him? Had I ever revealed more of my soul to anyone than I had revealed to him? If my tears spilled now, he would see them. If I trembled now, he would know.

She looked out across the water and allowed the feeling of longing to wash over her, spill into the crevices of her soul, and fill her completely.

Ten thousand swords before you, ten thousand daggers drawn. Ten thousand lives defend you, ten thousand warriors strong Our blood will spill ten thousand times In hope, ten thousand sigh For love we face ten thousand deaths With joy, ten thousand die Ten thousand Fey before you, ten thousand fierce and tall, Ten thousand souls protect you, beloved of us all ~Ten Thousand Swords, a Fey Warrior’s Song

THIS TORTURE Why should we tell you our love stories when you spill them together like blood in the dirt? Love is a pearl lost on the ocean floor, or a fire we can’t see, but how does saying that push us through the top of the head into the light above the head? Love is not an iron pot, so this boiling energy won’t help. Soul, heart, self. Beyond and within those is one saying, How long before I’m free of this torture!

Dear Heavenly Father, I have a friend who stands as close as a brother, a brave soul. I have seen in him the heart of a warrior... He is gallant, loyal, and true, sacrificing his esteem, forfeiting his comfort, even spilling his blood. But, what color is his soul? My friend has a desperate need, and I have seen it. How can I be his accuser, condemning the one who has gladly poured out his blood in my stead? But shall I deny my witness? There is a darkness, a gnawing void behind those eyes of steel... Will you make him a knight, dressed in holy raiment, fit to take a seat at your table?

And you, my best friend on earth, my soul sister who shares Chunky Monkey scoops and beefcake e-mails at the drop of a hat, the woman who made me wear a frothy, ruffled lime-colored bridesmaid dress that added fifteen pounds to my hips, are going to spill your guts to me, aren’t you? (Sunshine) No fair and the dress wasn’t lime, it was mint. (Selena) It was lime-icky green and I looked like a sick pistachio. (Sunshine)

When you're an artist, it's because there's something inside you that you can't keep from spilling out. Maybe it comes in the form of sentences, or a grand jete, or stroke of a paintbrush. The end result can be a million different things. But the seed, it's always the same. It's the emotion there isn't a word for. The feeling that's too big for your body. To show someone your soul, you have to bleed. People who are comfortable, people who are content, they don't create art.

I don't like and even resist, being broken wide-open. But, when the contents of my unconscious self spill out of me and i sift through all the disowned parts of who i am... it's an uncomfortably enlightening and eye-opening experience. It feels a bit like emotional bloodletting. I guess every now and then, i need that release valve to open all the way...

Just what she needed. More filth in her soul. Someday, maybe, she would explode from it, someday maybe, every rotten thing that had every been done to her and every rotten thing she’d ever done would erupt from her in a fountain of sewage and sorrow, all those secrets she kept even from herself spilling out and adding to the muck she could never wash off no matter how hard she tried. She’d never been bound by magic to keep those secrets. Just by her own shame.

I stand in my own power now, the questions of permission that I used to choke on for my every meal now dead in a fallen heap, and when they tell me that I will fall, I nod. I will fall, I reply, and my words are a whisper my words are a howl I will fall , I say, and the tumbling will be all my own. The skinned palms and oozing knees are holy wounds, stigmata of my She. I will catch my own spilled blood, and not a drop will be wasted.

His face in my dreams, seizing my guts, he floods me with dread. Soaked in soul, he swims in my eyes by the bed. Pour myself over him, moon spilling in And I wake up alone.

You want us to fear you,” she growls at me, speaking now in accented Kenettran. “You think that you can come here and destroy our homes, kill our loved ones—then make us grovel at your feet. You think we will sell you our souls for a few coins.” She lifts her chin. “But I am not afraid of you.” “Is that so?” I tilt my head at her curiously. “You should be.” She challenges me with a smile. “You can’t even bring yourself to spill our blood.” She nods in the direction of Sergio, who has already started to draw his sword. “You have one of your lackeys do it for you. You’re a coward queen, hiding behind your army. But you cannot crush our spirits beneath your Roses’ heels—you cannot win.

as though the soul’s abundance does not sometimes spill over in the most decrepit metaphors, since no one can ever give the exact measure of their needs, their ideas, their afflictions, and since human speech is like a cracked cauldron on which we knock out tunes for dancing-bears, when we wish to conjure pity from the stars.

And don't think that has anything to do with this." He points to his eye. "I'm aware in the moments I lack emotion. You and Garrick don't need to share little oh no glances. I already feel it. It's like sliding over a frozen lake while a shrinking part of me screams that I'm supposed to be swimming in those pieces I've bartered away, and those feelings are right beneath the surface, but fuck is skating faster and a hell of a lot less messy. This shit?" He swings his finger back toward the house. "It's messy and painful and infuriating, and if I could choose to give this portion of myself away, so help me, Malek, I would. I get it now. It's not just the power that's addicting; it's the freedom to not feel this." "Xaden," I whisper, all but bleeding out by the time he finishes. [...] "Don't barter it away." I beg as he stares at the sea and the words spill out of me faster and faster as his eyes harden and he resurrects the defences it took me a year to break past. "The pain. The mess. Give it to me. I'll hold it. I know that sounds ludicrous, but I'll find a way." I lace our fingers. "I will hold everything you don't want to feel because I love every part of you." "You already hold my soul and now you want my pain? Getting greedy, Violence." He brings my hand to his mouth and brushes a kiss over my knuckles before letting go.

No, we love war. War. Starvation. Plague. They fast-track us to enlightenment. “It's the mark of a very, very young soul,” Mr. Whittier used to say, “to try and fix the world. To try and save anyone from their ration of misery.” We have always loved war. We are born knowing that war is why we're here. And we love disease. Cancer. We love earthquakes. In this amusement-park fun house we call the planet earth, Mr. Whittier says we adore forest fires. Oil spills. Serial killers.

Luna. If I could, do you think I would spare my babies from the pain and love and suffering of the body from the first breath drawn? If I could, I would spill a silk sack of secrets down, like fireflies in the hot magic air. But my dear ones might not be ready. They might just swat those sacred secrets away like mosquitoes. If I could, do you think I would use my lunar power to rob them of their beautiful, poignant, soulful earth opera?

Not Exactly True That skin hate is dead. There will never be color blindness in a culture of fear. But when you live afraid of your neighbor, the monster you should most walk in terror of thrives. It starts as a little thing, small enough to burrow into your pores, take up excruciating residence in the dark recesses of your brain. Its name is paranoia, and it spreads like an oil spill, there in the shadows, chokes your humanity. Threatens your soul.

Day after day, night after night, study session after study session, we exchanged emails, we talked about our project, we read and worked and researched together, and there were times that I wanted him so much, I worried if he so much as touched my hand, I’d split right open and spill my soul all over the floor.

There is a theory that when a planet, like our earth for example, has manifested every form of life, when it has fulfilled itself to the point of exhaustion, it crumbles to bits and is dispersed like star dust throughout the universe. It does not roll on like a dead moon, but explodes, and in the space of a few minutes, there is not a trace of it visible in the heavens. In marine life we have a similar effect. it is called implosion. When an amphibian accustomed to the black depths rises above a certain level, when the pressure to which it adapts itself is lifted, the body bursts inwardly. Are we not familiar with this spectacle in the human being also? The norsemen who went berserk, the malay who runs amuck—are these not examples of implosion and explosion? When the cup is full it runs over. but when the cup and that which it contains are one substance, what then? There are moments when the elixir of life rises to such overbrimming splendor that the soul spills over. In the seraphic smile of the madonnas the soul is seen to flood the psyche. The moon of the face becomes full; the equation is perfect. A minute, a half minute, a second later, the miracle has passed. something intangible, something inexplicable, was given out—and received. In the life of a human being it may happen that the moon never comes to the full. In the life of some human beings it would seem, indeed, that the only mysterious phenomenon observable is that of perpetual eclipse. In the case of those afflicted with genius, whatever the form it may take, we are almost frightened to observe that there is nothing but a continuous waxing and waning of the moon. Rarer still are the anomalous ones who, having come to the full, are so terrified by the wonder of it that they spend the rest of their lives endeavoring to stifle that which gave them birth and being. The war of the mind is the story of the soul-split. When the moon was at full there were those who could not accept the dim death of diminution; they tried to hang full-blown in the zenith of their own heaven. They tried to arrest the action of the law which was manifesting itself through them, through their own birth and death, in fulfillment and transfiguration. Caught between the tides they were sundered; the soul departed the body, leaving the simulacrum of a divided self to fight it out in the mind. Blasted by their own radiance they live forever the futile quest of beauty, truth and harmony. Depossessed of their own effulgence they seek to possess the soul and spirit of those to whom they are attracted. They catch every beam of light; they reflect with every facet of their hungry being. instantly illumined, When the light is directed towards them, they are also speedily extinguished. The more intense the light which is cast upon them the more dazzling—and blinding—they appear. Especially dangerous are they to the radiant ones; it is always towards these bright and inexhaustible luminaries that they are most passionately drawn…

It is poetic and lyrical; words that spill forth like cool waters into the dusty dry rock bed of the Soul desiring love. It has been said that I’ve lived in the desert all my life and do not know what it means to be wet.

There’s something in her voice that stabs me, going past my defenses and straight into my soul. It bleeds black. An oil spill that stains everything it comes into contact with. She’ll be no different, ruined like me, but that won’t stop me.

Now and again, one could detect in a childless woman of a certain age the various characteristics of all the children she had never issued. Her body was haunted by the ghost of souls who hadn't lived yet. Premature ghosts. Half-ghosts. X's without Y's. Y's without X's. They applied at her womb and were denied, but, meant for her and no one else, they wouldn't go away. Like tiny ectoplasmic gophers, they hunkered in her tear ducts. They shone through her sighs. Often to her chagrin, they would soften the voice she used in the marketplace. When she spilled wine, it was their playful antics that jostled the glass. They called out her name in the bath or when she passed real children in the street. The spirit babies were everywhere her companions, and everywhere they left her lonesome - yet they no more bore her resentment than a seed resents uneaten fruit. Like pet gnats, like phosphorescence, like sighs on a string, they would follow her into eternity.

Look at this,” he went on using a hand to shape the long—so long pipe curved along his thigh. She looked, of course. It was as if her eyes were on a string and he demanded her gaze. All the spit in her mouth dried up. “This is for you, Winter. You want to ride it? Good. You want to suck on it until I pop in your mouth? Fucking awesome. You want to direct me like traffic, telling me what to do with this hard-fucking dick that’s all for you. Make me wait for it, beg for it, spill over my fingers while you let me look at your tits? You only gotta say the word, babe.

The Universe is made of hands; Hands that twist fabric and sizzle in the air. Hands that grasp curls and flick words away Small, smooth fingers pouring gold over gaping wounds Before slicing into soft tissue, Blood mixing with gold. Hands that make it beautiful. The Universe is made of bones; Bones that cut against yards of skin, Warm and yielding and moulded around the wings that splay across his back. Bones that cage the heart and dig into the hollows. Bones that break, Tear the warm, yielding skin. Bones that shred and brush his chin. The Universe is made of lips; Lips that breathe and stutter warm sighs, Caressing the cracks in his broken body, the body that he broke. Lips that carve paths into stone, That leave trails upon gooseflesh, Lips that make incisions, Too delicate to mend. The Universe is made of blood; Blood that runs warm and hot and steady and crimson, Pumping beneath the stone and the gold. Blood that burns with every jerk of limbs. Blood that spills on open palms, Staining the fabric, Filling up his throat. The Universe is made of eyes; Eyes that breach and eyes that splice and eyes that never leave. Eyes that ripple oceans. Eyes that whisper in the dark. Eyes that rip open the seams. Eyes that create wounds, create chaos, create broken shards of blue. Eyes that alight and won’t let go. The Universe was built. The Universe fell. You took it apart, Dragged the chaos from my soul with your hands, Your bones, Your lips, Your blood, Your eyes. And now you’re back. And so is the Universe. And so, I suppose, am I. The Universe is made of five things. The Universe is made of you.

Who was I to judge the heart which broke into that moment, spilling kindness and longing? Who was I to dismiss her story because I did not know it?

My soul is crushed under the weight of tears I can’t spill.

To my sick soul (as sin’s true nature is) Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss. So full of artless jealousy is guilt, It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.

Colpo di fulmine. The thunderbolt, as Italians call it. When love strikes someone like lightning, so powerful and intense it can’t be denied. It’s beautiful and messy, cracking a chest open and spilling their soul out for the world to see. It turns a person inside out, and there’s no going back from it. Once the thunderbolt hits, your life is irrevocably changed.

Cauldron save me," she began whispering, her voice lovely and even-like music. "Mother hold me," she went on, reciting a prayer similar to one I'd heard once before, when Tamlin eased the passing of that lesser faerie who'd died in the foyer. Another of Amarantha's victims. "Guide me to you." I was unable to raise my dagger, unable to take the step that would close the distance between us. "Let me pass through the gates; let me smell that immortal land of milk and honey." Silent tears slide down my face and neck, where they dampened the filthy collar of my tunic. As she spoke, I knew I would be forever barred from that immortal land. I knew that whatever Mother she meant would never embrace me. In saving Tamlin, I was to damn myself. I couldn't do this-couldn't lift that dagger again. "Let me fear no evil," she breathed, staring at me-into me, into the soul that was cleaving itself apart."Let me feel no pain." A sob broke from my lips. "I'm sorry," I moaned. "Let me enter eternity," She breathed. I wept as I understood. Kill me now, she was saying. Do it fast. Don't make it hurt. Kill me now. Her bronze eyes were steady, if not sorrowful. Infinitely, infinitely worse than the pleading of the dead faerie beside her. I couldn't do it. But she held my gaze-held my gaze and nodded. As I lifted the ash dagger, something inside me fractured so completely that there would be no hope of ever repairing it. No matter how many years passed, no matter how many times I might try to paint her face.” As I lifted the ash dagger, something inside me fractured so completely that there would be no hope of ever repairing it. No matter how many years passed, no matter how many times I might try to paint her face. More faeries wailed now-her kinsmen and friends. The dagger was a weight in my hand-my hand, shining and coated with the blood of the first faerie. It would be more honorable to refuse-to die, rather than murder innocents. But... but... "Let me enter eternity," she repeated, lifting her chin. "Fear no evil," she whispered-just for me. "Feel no pain." I gripped her delicate, bony shoulder and drove the dagger into her heart. She gasped, and blood spilled onto the ground like a splattering of rain. Her eyes were closed when I looked at her face again. She slumped to the floor and didn't move. I went somewhere far, far away from myself.

Nightmares are a fluid terror. Once you get the briefest handle on one, it will change. Filling nooks in the soul like spilled water filling cracks in the floor. Nightmares are a seeping chill, created by the mind to punish itself. In this, a nightmare is the very definition of masochism. Most of us are modest enough to keep that sort of thing tucked away, hidden.

Brother,you who have the light, tell me mine. I am like a blind man. I go without direction and fumble along. I go under tempests and storms, blind with fantasy and crazy with harmony. That is my malady. Dreaming. Poetry is the iron jacket with a thousand bloody points I wear upon my soul. The bloodstained thorns spill the drops of my melancholy. And so I go, blind and crazy, through this bitter world; at times it seems to me that the path is very long, and at times that it's very short... And in this back-and-forth between eagerness and agony, I am full of woes I can hardly bear. Don't you hear the drops of my melancholy falling?

How can you love me if you don’t even know me?” He lifted my arms around his neck and placed his hands on the small of my back. “I know you, Jade. You’re witty and stubborn, like when you wanted to get rid of me at the bar in San Diego. And you’re sweet and caring, like when you talked to my mother at the hospital. And you can drink like a sailor. ” He chuckled. “And you hardly ever blush, but when you do it’s like the sunshine.” Then, he whispered in my ear with a husky voice, “And you make love with your soul.” Peter gave my earlobe a quick nibble. “I couldn’t care less about energy. It might have brought us together, but I only care about you. I want to spend the rest of my days with you; no matter if it’ll be ten or ten thousand.” Despite myself, I felt my eyes burn from tears I wasn’t ready to shed. Still, I couldn’t say it. “Peter...” I kissed him with all the tenderness I found in my heart and said, “the tub is about to spill.” “Oh, shit.” He jerked away from me, turned the water off and unplugged the tub, then hugged me again with wet hands. “All we need is time, Jade. You’ll see this love is real.

People think loneliness is absence. It isn't. It's a filling up, a rising, spilling tide that crashes into every gully and chasm of your mind and soul until you're choked with emptiness, awash with desolation, thrashing in the foam of it, reaching for a hand to hold and yet finding no hand, no refuge, no comfort.

You know, it’s what everyone needs, really—a place where they can spill their insides and let it all out. It’s like a cleansing of the soul. All of us have wounds we bury deep inside, and they affect us without our even realizing it.

how to (un)cage a girl longer hair bigger breasts smoother skin flatter stomach whiter teeth smaller nose if you worry enough you won't have time or energy to see what really is what could i have learned if i didn't live here in this cell? where could i have flown? how would i have grown? if i forgave this shell? oh, my body let me cradle you like my girl's her long limbs spilling over or folding up like silk her gold-tinged curls ringleting my fingers her eyes the blue of sorrow and hyacinth oh, my body when you are at peace rocked here to sleep as if by a mother as if by a lover who sees your flushed skin the grace that you're in the gleam of your hair the green of your stare then this soul can fly off to understand pyramids and time history electricity technology symbology that all of us are one that all of us are love

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.

You need only one taste of madness, and the timeless journey can be spent in thoughts that follow behind like the fiery tail of a comet. And this glowing chaos, the soul will carry under the linings of its peace, to weave beautiful memories with.

Some might question why the Midnight Mayor, usually to be found on such nights prowling the streets of the city, was sighted sneaking into a telephone exchange a few minutes before the word began to spill across the streets, spreading outwards from the website of Magicals Anonymous. Some might wonder why one or two computers, having received their messages, exploded three minutes after. But, as the Midnight Mayor was the first to point out, all this was speculation. Nothing could be blamed on him.

"Turn my back on the world..." the historian repeated softly and slowly, his head moving to face the mage. "Turn my back on the world!" Emotion rarely marred the surface of Astinus's cold voice, but now anger struck the placid calm of his soul like a rock hurled into still water. "I? Turn my back on the world?" Astinus's voice rolled around the library as the thunder had rolled previously. "I am the world, as you well know, old friend! Countless times I have been born! Countless deaths I have died! Every tear shed - mine have flowed! Every drop of blood spilled - mine has drained! Every agony, every joy ever felt has been mine to share! "I sit with my hand on the Sphere of Time, the sphere you made for me, old friend, and I travel the length and breadth of this world chronicling its history. I have committed the blackest deeds! I have made the noblest sacrifices. I am human, elf, and ogre. I am male and female. I have borne children. I have murdered children. I saw you as you were. I see you as you are. If I seem cold and unfeeling, it is because that is how I survive without losing my sanity! My passion goes into my words.

And if someone were to ask, Noah, what’s the most important aspect of story? I would most likely answer, character, but I’m not sure that’s true, because my favorite books contain my favorite places. I do not say, I love Harry Potter, or I love Frodo Baggins; I say, I love Hogwarts, and I love Middle-earth. Thoreau’s Walden is less about the book, more about the pond. The woods. And so setting, I think, is the secret weapon of storytelling. I always want to meet new people until I’ve met them. I think if I spend enough time with a person so we get woven together like an old basket, eventually we’ll think in similar patterns until our various histories are apples and oranges spilling over the edge of the basket, and I think this kind of shared history is dangerous. I think it’s okay to recognize a thing’s faults and still like that thing. Because apples and oranges spilling from a basket can be beautiful too. I think I’m whatever personality hates personality tests. I think nostalgia is just a soul’s way of missing a thing, and like long-distance love, nostalgia grows deeper with time until the reality of what a thing actually was gets blurred to the point you miss the idea of the thing more than the thing itself. I like the idea of hot cocoa more than drinking

And don't think that has anything to do with this." He points to his eye. "I'm aware in the moments I lack emotion. You and Garrick don't need to share little oh no glances. I already feel it. It's like sliding over a frozen lake while a shrinking part of me screams that I'm supposed to be swimming in those pieces I've bartered away, and those feelings are right beneath the surface, but fuck is skating faster and a hell of a lot less messy. This shit?" He swings his finger back toward the house. "It's messy and painful and infuriating, and if I could choose to give this portion of myself away, so help me, Malek, I would. I get it now. It's not just the power that's addicting; it's the freedom to not feel this." "Xaden," I whisper, all but bleeding out by the time he finishes. [...] "Don't barter it away." I beg as he stares at the sea and the words spill out of me faster and faster as his eyes harden and he resurrects the defences it took me a year to break past. "The pain. The mess. Give it to me. I'll hold it. I know that sounds ludicrous, but I'll find a way." I lace our fingers. "I will hold everything you don't want to feel because I love every part of you." "You already hold my soul and now you want my pain? Getting greedy, Violence." He brings my hand to his mouth and brushes a kiss over my knuckles before letting go.

I became obsessed with Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer. I devoured all kinds of books for tortured souls. Started collecting issues of the independence movement's weekly. Studied up on political game theory, an antidote to my spiritual reading. It made me feel like an outsider, which became my way of recharging. At the break of dawn, around six or seven like a nocturnal creature afraid of the light, I'd finally lay my head - which by then was spilling over with thoughts - down onto the comforter. That's how it went when things were good.

I want to fuck the shit out of her insecurities until the beauty of her soul spills onto the covers that she always hides under... ...until she lays there, stripped of her flaws...lying ass naked in her desirability... ...and then maybe... I would attempt to take her clothes off.

Good old days? Whatever good in them may have been, they’re long past. No use crying over them now when they are but distant memories. I shall tell you the trick – in a person’s mind, all distant memories eventually grow tinted with rays of sunshine, and the toils and hardships the flesh and the soul have undergone get lost and forgotten. Hence you begin believing that those old days were good, and have a hard time dealing with present difficulties… I believe, whatever hardship you may face at present, it is still better than some vague and blurry flashbacks you carry in your mind, for the present can be felt upon the touch, sensed upon the breath, lived through and fought for. Good old days are long gone, and if you ask me, have never been as good as you may now imagine. There is only now, and the bitterer it is, the sweeter it feels to live the moment to its fullest.

Styx sat forward and signed. “Maddie going with?” My hands clenched on the table and I spat out, “Yeah.” Styx looked to Ky, then signed, “She gonna be protected? You gonna be spilling blood?” “Maybe. Probably. Abso-fuckin’-lutely,” I replied. “But Maddie’s with me, by my fucking side, on my fucking bike, sleeping by my fucking side. She’s my bitch, I own her, and I decide what the fuck happens with her now, not you. That tell you enough?

You’re not answering my question. It’s getting irritating.” “Okay, serious answer. Ready? Here we go.” Nora took a deep breath. She didn’t want to talk about this stuff with Marie-Laure, but as long as she stayed interesting, as long as she stayed entertaining, she stayed alive. “I get off on submitting to Søren. I don’t know how or why. I can’t explain any more than you can explain why you like Irish breakfast tea instead of English breakfast or whatever you’re drinking. It’s a personal taste. I liked it. He’s the most beautiful man on earth, he’s got an inner drive and power that I’m drawn to, he can scare the shit out of someone with a glance, he can put someone on their knees with a word, he can see into your soul if you make the mistake of looking into his eyes. And it is a mistake because you will never want to look away again no matter how bare and naked he lays your most private self. I knelt at his feet because I felt like that’s where I belonged. And no, not because I was so unworthy of him, but because he was so utterly worthy of my devotion.” A noble speech and a true one, Nora decided as her words settled into the room. True, yes, but not the whole truth. Might as well spill it all. “Oh,” she added a moment later. “And me submitting to pain gets him rock hard and the man fucks like a freight train when in the right mood. Not that you would know anything about that.

Opia. So much can be said in a glance. Such ambiguous intensity, both invasive and vulnerable—glittering black, bottomless and opaque. The eye is a keyhole, through which the world pours in and a world spills out. And for a few seconds, you can peek through into a vault, that contains everything they are. But whether the eyes are the windows of the soul or the doors of perception, it doesn't matter: you're still standing on the outside of the house. Eye contact isn't really contact at all. It's only ever a glance, a near miss, that you can only feel as it slips past you. There’s so much we keep in the back room. We offer up a sample of who we are, of what we think people want us to be. But so rarely do we stop to look inside, and let our eyes adjust, and see what's really there. Because you too are peering out from behind your own door. You put yourself out there, trying to decide how much of the world to let in. It's all too easy for others to size you up, and carry on their way. They can see you more clearly than you ever could. And yours is the only vault you can't see into, that you can't size up in an instant. So we're all just exchanging glances, trying to tell each other who we are, trying to catch a glimpse of ourselves, feeling around in the darkness.

To trace the history of a river or a raindrop . . . is also to trace the history of the soul, the history of the mind descending and arising in the body. In both, we constantly seek and stumble upon divinity, which like feeding the lake, and the spring becoming a waterfall, feeds, spills, falls, and feeds itself all over again.

He never sees it, never gazes upon its vastness, only senses its size, a terrible dark wave seeping from the earth beneath the foundation of the old church. This impossibly formless thing, this unescapable void, it crashes over the threshold, spilling over everything in its wake, swallowing the world as it swallows minds and souls.

It might cause considerable surprise to the informed observer (who does not exist) to note that Mr B's eyes begin to fill with tears. They overflow and spill down along the deep soft creases of his careworn face as he sits very still in the centre of the unstill world and weeps rivers of salty water for all the lost souls, including his own.

Faye tilted her head slightly. “When was your first kill?” Winston met her stare for a long while, then exhaled. “I was nineteen, fighting a war I probably shouldn’t have been fighting, but it’s not like I knew that at the time.” “Mm. Did you regret it?” Winston grinned, but she could see the dark edges to it. “What? You think I come from some tragic backstory, blondie? That I’m a broken little boy who kills to fill that hole inside of my chest where my soul used to be? Nah. This ain’t one of them stories. I can’t dance or roll my tongue, but I can kill people pretty good. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been good at and when I lay my head down at night, I sleep like a baby. I don’t see their faces. Never have. Probably never will.” A chill spilled through her. The matter-of-fact nature of his confession scared her more than almost anything else she’d ever heard him say.

The summer I turned eleven, I found out that ghosts are real. Guess it's hard to rest nice and easy in your coffin if you got stuff on your mind. Your soul stays chained to earth instead of zipping up to heaven to sing in one of the angel choirs. Sometimes ghosts show up in the msot peculiar places. Sometimes ghosts fool you. Then you are those ghosts that hang around because we have unfinished business. Business that sinks like old crawfish left in a bucket for a week. That's some nasty smell let me tell you. But the most important thing I learned is that ghosts can help you spill your guts before guilt eats you up and leaves a hole that can't ever be fixed no matter how many patches you try to steam iron across it.

Kicking off the comfortable slides, she ran from him in bare feet, her arms wide like wings, ropes of hair spilling down her back wildly like a glossy cape. His heart had wings of its own, as if he were a young man again with no weights on his heart, but with the wisdom of his present age to know what a tremendous gift this moment was. He caught up with her, seized her hand. They kept running, both running from shadows but running together, throwing off a light that he reflected might keep those shadows cowering in the past where they belonged.

someone planted centuries in my soul. i get so very sure of this every time i try to stretch so much longing across one lifetime there is nothing that leaves you feeling quite so small as having to shove all this being into your one allotted body VII . trouble is i wear my heart on my words so large it chokes me before any sound can come spilling into this electric air

I adore the sea, yet I'm terrified of its raging waters. Love and dread go hand in hand for me. One enhances the other. I'm terrified to love; I'm afraid to drown in its endless waves. I'm frightened of ending up on desolate shores," she confessed. "Let the sea listen to all your woes and sorrows, and let it speak to your soul. Spill out all your fears and embrace its tides." He replied.

Curl moaned. Mattie rocked. Propelled by the sound, Mattie rocked her out of that bed, out of that room, into a blue vastness just underneath the sun and above time. She rocked her over Aegean seas so clean they shine like crystal, so clear the fresh blood of sacrificed babies torn from their mothers arms and given to Neptune could be seen like pink froth on the water. She rocked her on and on, past Dachau, where soul-gutted Jewish mothers swept their children's entrails off laboratory floors. They flew past the spilled brains of Senegalese infants whose mothers had dashed them on the wooden sides of slave ships. And she rocked on. She rocked her into her childhood and let her see murdered dreams. And she rocked her back, back into the womb, to the nadir of her hurt, and they found it-a slight silver splinter, embedded just below the surface of her skin. And Mattie rocked and pulled-and the splinter gave way, but its roots were deep, gigantic, ragged, and they tore up flesh with bits of fat and muscle tissue clinging to them. They left a huge hole, which was already starting to pus over, but Mattie was satisfied. It would heal.

The mystery of the universe had once inhabited these lolling lumps, had given each an identity, a way of walking, perhaps a special habit of address or a way with words or a knack of putting color on canvas. They had been so different, then. Now they were nothing, heaps of nothing. Can a bullet or a mortar fragment do this? Does this force, this mystery, I mean this soul — does this spill out on the ground along with the blood? No. It is somewhere, I know it.

The drinking dens are spilling out There's staggering in the square There's lads and lasses falling about And a crackling in the air Down around the dungeon doors The shelters and the queues Everybody's looking for Somebody's arms to fall into And it's what it is It's what it is now There's frost on the graves and the monuments But the taverns are warm in town People curse the government And shovel hot food down The lights are out in the city hall The castle and the keep The moon shines down upon it all The legless and asleep And it's cold on the tollgate With the wagons creeping through Cold on the tollgate God knows what I could do with you And it's what it is It's what it is now The garrison sleeps in the citadel With the ghosts and the ancient stones High up on the parapet A Scottish piper stands alone And high on the wind The highland drums begin to roll And something from the past just comes And stares into my soul And it's cold on the tollgate With the Caledonian Blues Cold on the tollgate God knows what I could do with you And it's what it is It's what it is now What it is It's what it is now There's a chink of light, there's a burning wick There's a lantern in the tower Wee Willie Winkie with a candlestick Still writing songs in the wee wee hours On Charlotte Street I take A walking stick from my hotel The ghost of Dirty Dick Is still in search of Little Nell And it's what it is It's what it is now Oh what it is What it is now

When you’re an artist,” Win says, “it’s because there’s something inside you that you can’t keep from spilling out. Maybe it comes in the form of sentences, or a grand jeté, or a stroke of a paintbrush. The end result can be a million different things. But the seed, it’s always the same. It’s the emotion there isn’t a word for. The feeling that’s too big for your body. To show someone your soul, you have to bleed. People who are comfortable—people who are content—they don’t create art.

Spectre: Atrocitus? You wish to continue to fight? Atrocitus: If I must. You were chained to a human soul to understand humanity, but it is clear you understand it no more than the guardians. This man... This man lost his daughter. You have no emotional component to your judgement. For you, vengeance is simply eye-for-an-eye. But that convict's life did not equal the life of Kim's daughter. His "eye" is worth nothing compared to hers. Eye-for-an-eye is a fallacy. Spectre: You dare question my scripture? Atrocitus: You may be objective and calm in your judgments, Spectre, but once you pass them you are no longer haunted by their victims. But the victims are our families. And the hauntings never stop. No matter what blood has spilled, there will never be enough to balance the scales. So if you wish to judge James Kim, you must first judge me.

Her hair, which had been a bland and forgettable colour before, had been dyed a deep, blood red, the furious set to her features letting me know that it was a promise of its own, to see the blood of her enemies spilled in payment for the losses she’d suffered in that battle. It suited her, the colour matching with the fire which burned unwaveringly within her soul, bright and brutal and wholly her. “I do,” I agreed. “Then I am coming with you. My Maxy boy awaits me, and I shall bay for vengeance on behalf of my dear Daddy while ripping the throats from our enemies as we retrieve him.

This universe an old enchantment guards; Its objects are carved cups of World-Delight Whose charmed wine is some deep soul’s rapture-drink: The All-Wonderful has packed heaven with his dreams, He has made blank ancient Space his marvel-house; He spilled his spirit into Matter’s signs: His fires of grandeur burn in the great sun, He glides through heaven shimmering in the moon; He is beauty carolling in the fields of sound; He chants the stanzas of the odes of Wind; He is silence watching in the stars at night; He wakes at dawn and calls from every bough, Lies stunned in the stone and dreams in flower and tree.

do you want to know how to seduce the night? this is not a poem about the stars or the moon because we all know i have overused those terms and i believe with the abundance of anything brings with it a deadly exhaustion we all cannot afford. if you truly want to fuck the night and i mean fuck it hard and with purpose so that fucking becomes making love and making love becomes forever then i suggest you get off your lazy ass and create art. create it with your soul and your soul alone and do not be afraid of what spills out of it. no matter the absurdness or the darkness or the sadness just let yourself be free.

When white people envision their perfect home, it always has hardwood floors. In fact, most white people would prefer a dirt floor over wall-to-wall carpeting, because to them it would have the same level of cleanliness and probably fewer germs. White people are petrified of germs, and when they look at a carpet all they can see is everything that has ever been spilled, tracked in, or shaken loose into the carpet fibers. But more disgusting to white people is that wall-to-wall carpeting reminds them of suburban homes, motel rooms, and the horrible apartments that they have visited or lived in over the years. It has no soul. Only germs. Hardwood floors, on the other hand, are easily cleaned and give a sense of character to a place, since they are often the original flooring in older buildings. It is a well-known white fantasy to purchase a home or apartment that has disgusting carpet and then to pull it up to reveal a beautiful hardwood floor underneath.

This is the heart of it, the scared woman who does not want to go alone to the man any longer, because when she does, when she takes of her baggy dress, displaying to him rancid breasts each almost as big as his own head, or no breasts, or mammectomized scar tissues taped over with old tennis balls to give her the right curves; when, vending her flesh, she stands or squats waiting, congealing the air firstly with her greasy cheesey stench of unwashed feet confined in week-old socks, secondly with her perfume of leotards and panties also a week old, crusted with semen and urine, brown-greased with the filth of alleys; thirdly with the odor of her dress also worn for a week, emblazoned with beer-spills and cigarette-ash and salted with the smelly sweat of sex, dread, fever, addiction—when she goes to the man, and is accepted by him, when all these stinking skins of hers have come off (either quickly, to get it over with, or slowly like a big truck pulling into a weigh station because she is tired), when she nakedly presents her soul’s ageing soul, exhaling from every pore physical and ectoplasmic her fourth and supreme smell which makes eyes water more than any queen of red onions—rotten waxy smell from between her breasts, I said, bloody pissy shitty smell from between her legs, sweat-smell and underarm-smell, all blended into her halo, generalized sweetish smell of unwashed flesh; when she hunkers painfully down with her customer on bed or a floor or in an alley, then she expects her own death. Her smell is enough to keep him from knowing the heart of her, and the heart of her is not the heart of it. The heart of it is that she is scared.

I argue against purism not because I want a devastated world, the Mordor of industrial capitalism emerging as from a closely aligned alternate universe through our floating islands of plastic gradually breaking down into microbeads consumed by the scant marine life left alive after generations of overfishing, bottom scraping, and coral reef–killing ocean acidification; our human-caused, place-devastating elevated sea levels; our earth-shaking, water poisoning fracking; our toxic lakes made of the externalities of rare-earth mineral production for so-called advanced electronics; our soul-and-life destroying prisons; our oil spills; our children playing with bits of dirty bombs; our white phosphorus; our generations of trauma held in the body; our cancers; and I could go on. I argue against purism because it is one bad but common approach to devastation in all its forms. It is a common approach for anyone who attempts to meet and control a complex situation that is fundamentally outside our control. It is a bad approach because it shuts down precisely the field of possibility that might allow us to take better collective action against the destruction of the world in all its strange, delightful, impure frolic. Purism is a de-collectivizing, de-mobilizing, paradoxical politics of despair. This world deserves better.

The next thing I knew Jamie was in my lap wrapping her arms around my neck as if she planned on keeping me hostage for eternity. If that were the case, bring on the shackles babe, because no way was I going to be the one to end this epic kiss. I felt like I was on fire—like warm energy was spilling out of Jamie, washing over me and causing all my hair to stand on end. I started shaking—just a slight tremor in my hands at first, but it quickly progressed to violent, uncontrollable shivers. The energy was filling my body so full I thought I’d literally burst apart at my seams. Then, when I was ready to combust Jamie finally stilled. She pulled her face back and smiled at me with a cool expression, but I know she was affected as I was. I wasn’t the only one breathing hard and shaking. “You can keep the gum,” she said, trying to mask her feelings with a smirk. She couldn’t quite manage it though. Her eyes were bright and full of disbelief. She was as surprised as I was. She climbed off me and with a wink said, “Have fun at the dance.” And then she was gone. She walked out of the cafeteria as if that hadn’t just happened. As if she hadn’t just completely wrecked me. I had no idea if what I felt meant we were soul mates or something crazy like that, but I knew two things for certain. One: Jamie Baker wasn’t the ice queen she pretended to be. And two: I wanted her more than anything I’d ever wanted in my entire life. I had a feeling this wasn’t going to be easy, but I knew deep down in my gut it would be worth it. “Game on, Ice Queen,” I muttered as I stumbled back over to Mike to rub my victory in his face. “You’re already mine. You just don’t know it yet.

What is the use of composing if it is to confine the product within the precinct of the concert or the solitude of listening to the radio? To compose, at least by propensity, is to give to do, not to give to hear but to give to write. The modern location for music is not the concert hall, but the stage on which the musicians pass, in what is often a dazzling display, from one source of sound to another. It is we who are playing, though still it is true by proxy; but one can imagine the concert - later on? - as exclusively a workshop, from which nothing spills over - no dream, no imaginary, no short, no 'soul' and where all the musical art is absorbed in a praxis with no remainder.

I love everything that flows,’ said the great blind Milton of our times. I was thinking of him this morning when I awoke with a great bloody shout of joy: I was thinking of his rivers and trees and all that world of night which he is exploring. Yes, I said to myself, I too love everything that flows: rivers, sewers, lava, semen, blood, bile, words, sentences. I love the amniotic fluid when it spills out of the bag. I love the kidney with it’s painful gall-stones, its gravel and what-not; I love the urine that pours out scalding and the clap that runs endlessly; I love the words of hysterics and the sentences that flow on like dysentery and mirror all the sick images of the soul...

Stronger Than Time Since I have set my lips to your full cup, my sweet, Since I my pallid face between your hands have laid, Since I have known your soul, and all the bloom of it, And all the perfume rare, now buried in the shade; Since it was given to me to hear on happy while, The words wherein your heart spoke all its mysteries, Since I have seen you weep, and since I have seen you smile, Your lips upon my lips, and your eyes upon my eyes; Since I have known above my forehead glance and gleam, A ray, a single ray, of your star, veiled always, Since I have felt the fall, upon my lifetime's stream, Of one rose petal plucked from the roses of your days; I now am bold to say to the swift changing hours, Pass, pass upon your way, for I grow never old, Fleet to the dark abysm with all your fading flowers, One rose that none may pluck, within my heart I hold. Your flying wings may smite, but they can never spill The cup fulfilled of love, from which my lips are wet; My heart has far more fire than you can frost to chill, My soul more love than you can make my soul forget

I have a friend who each year on the anniversary of his wife's death, goes to her grave with some friends where they ritually pour Bombay gin on her grave because she liked martinis. As frivolous as that may seem, there is something in libation, a pouring out that symbolizes a pouring out of the soul, a pouring out of love, of remembrance. There is extravagance in my friend's ritual because gin, especially Bombay gin, is expensive; it's not something that one normally pours into the ground. In the annual ritual of spilling gin on the grave there is also the dimension of community. My friend goes with others who knew his wife, who laughed with her, who celebrated with her, who worshiped with her. They together make the pilgrimage. Therefore there is a further sense of community, of bonding among them as they make the annual pilgrimage, perhaps one member less through death, perhaps one member absent because he or she has moved to another place, or is ill. Still they go together, however many they are, to celebrate this person's life, to tell stories, to pour out gin, to pray.

With memories of gravestones, of combing fingers through tangled hair, I wonder too ... If the rent in the canvas of our life backdrop, the losses that puncture our world, and our own emptiness, might actually become places to see. To see through to God. That which tears open our souls, those holes which splatter sight, they actually become the thin, open places to see through the mess of this place to the heart aching beauty beyond. To him. To the god whom we endlessly crave. But how? How do we choose to allow the holes to become seeing through to collect places? How do I give up resentment for gratitude, anger for spilling joy, so focus for God communion. To fully live to fully live grace enjoy with all that is beauty internal it is possible

Michael grew silent, his gaze softening as he looked from me to Will, and a dim light of hope flickered in my heart. “You would mourn for him.” “Yes, I said. “I would mourn him forever with a broken heart. This human soul has given me so many blessings and curses. I’m the only one of our kind who has ever felt the most perfect happiness and the truest sorrow - because of this soul. My love for my Guardian is one of those blessings. It’s not a curse.” “You can,” I promised. “Please trust me. I need all the help I can get, and that includes yours. If you kill my Guardian, then I will never forgive you. I can’t be at war with you too. Please, please, Michael, my brother. Don’t kill him. … A tear caught on the edge of my lips. “Do you love me as your sister?” His mouth opened to reply, but nothing came out. “It’s okay,” I whispered. “You’re worried about me, because you love me. Don’t be afraid of feeling anything. our Father made us this way. He wouldn’t make a mistake.” “I…,” Michael said, and emotion spilled over his face. His brow furrowed with exhaustion and he seemed overwhelmed by what he felt. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before opening them again. “You are my sister, Gabriel.” “Then don’t do this.” I begged him. He was quiet again for several agonising moments, returning to his emotionless state. “Keep him. I have faith in you, Sister. Will and I breathed sighs of relief, but it was a few seconds before Michael withdrew his sword. His expression remained unchanging as he lifted Will’s death warrant.

I suppose the real reason Ginny Weasley's like this is because she opened her heart and spilled all her secrets to an invisible stranger." "What are you talking about?" said Harry. "The diary," said Riddle. "My diary. Little Ginny's been writing in it for months and months, telling me all her pitiful worries and woes- how her brothers tease her, how she had come to school with secondhand robes and books, how"- Riddle's eyes glinted- "how she didn't think famous, good, great Harry Potter would ever like her..." All the time he spoke, Riddle's eyes never left Harry's face. There was an almost hungry look in them. "It's very boring, having to listen to the silly little troubles of an eleven-year-old girl," he went on. "But I was patient. I wrote back. I was sympathetic, I was kind. Ginny simply loved me. No one's ever understood me like you, Tom... I'm so glad I've got this diary to confide in.... It's like having a friend I can carry around in my pocket...." Riddle laughed, a high, cold laugh that didn't suit him. It made the hairs stand up on the back of Harry's neck. "If I say it myself, Harry, I've always been able to charm the people I needed. So Ginny poured out her soul to me, and her soul happened to be exactly what I wanted.... I grew stronger and stronger on a diet of her deepest fears, her darkest secrets. I grew powerful, more powerful than little Miss Weasley. Powerful enough to start feeding Miss Weasley a few of my secrets, to start pouring a little of my soul into her..." "What d'you mean?" said Harry, whose mouth had gone dry. "Haven't you guessed yet, Harry Potter?" said Riddle softly. "Ginny Weasley opened the Chamber of Secrets. She strangled the school roosters and daubed threatening messages on the walls. She set the Serpent of Slytherin on four Mudbloods, and the Squib's cat." "No," Harry whispered. "Yes," said Riddle, calmly. "Of course, she didn't know what she was doing at first. It was very amusing. I wish you could have seen her new diary entries... far more interesting, they became... Dear Tom," he recited, watching Harry's horrified face, "I think I'm losing my memory. There are rooster feathers all over my robes and I don't know how they got there. Dear Tom, I can't remember what I did on the night of Halloween, but a cat was attacked and I've got paint all down my front. Dear Tom, Percy keeps telling me I'm pale and I'm not myself. I think he suspects me.... There was another attack today and I don't know where I was. Tom, what am I going to do? I think I'm going mad.... I think I'm the one attacking everyone, Tom!

The Universe is Made of Five Things' is how it starts. He thinks it's probably the title, but his fingers don't stop long enough to let him question it any more than that. He rubs his eyes, keeps typing with shaky, jerking fingers. 'The Universe is made of hands; Hands that twist fabric and sizzle in the air. Hands that grasp curls and flick words away. Small, smooth fingers pouring gold over gaping wounds. Before slicing into soft tissue, Blood mixing with gold. Hands that make it beautiful. The Universe is made of bones; Bones that cut against yards of skin, Warm and yielding and moulded around the wings that splay across his back. Bones that cage the heart and dig into the hollows. Bones that break, Tear the warm, yielding skin. Bones that shred and brush his chin. The Universe is made of lips; Lips that breathe and stutter warm sighs, Caressing the craks in his broken body, the body that he broke. Lips that carve paths into stone, That leave trails upon gooseflesh, Lips that nake incisions, Too delicate to mend. The Universe is made of blood; Blood that runs warm and hot and steady and crimson, Pumping beneath the stone and the gold. Blood that burns with every jerk of limbs. Blood that spills on open palms, Staining the fabric, Filling up his throat. The Universe is made of eyes, Eyes that breach and eyes that splice and eyes that never leave. Eyes that ripple oceans. Eyes that whisper in the dark. Eyes that create wounds, create chaos, create broken shards of blue. Eyes that alight and won ' t let go. The Universe was built. The Universe fell. You took it apart, Draggd the chaos from my soul with your hands, Your bones, Your lips, Your blood, Your eyes, And now you're back. And so is the Universe, And so, I suppose, am I. The Universe is made of five things. The Universe is made of you.

I love everything that flows,” said the great blind Milton of our times. I was thinking of him this morning when I awoke with a great bloody shout of joy: I was thinking of his rivers and trees and all that world of night which he is exploring. Yes, I said to myself, I too love everything that flows: rivers, sewers, lava, semen, blood, bile, words, sentences. I love the amniotic fluid when it spills out of the bag. I love the kidney with its painful gallstones, its gravel and what-not; I love the urine that pours out scalding and the clap that runs endlessly; I love the words of hysterics and the sentences that flow on like dysentery and mirror all the sick images of the soul; I love the great rivers like the Amazon and the Orinoco, where crazy men like Moravagine float on through dream and legend in an open boat and drown in the blind mouths of the river. I love everything that flows, even the menstrual flow that carries away the seed unfecund. I love scripts that flow, be they hieratic, esoteric, perverse, polymorph, or unilateral. I love everything that flows, everything that has time in it and becoming, that brings us back to the beginning where there is never end: the violence of the prophets, the obscenity that is ecstasy, the wisdom of the fanatic, the priest with his rubber litany, the foul words of the whore, the spittle that floats away in the gutter, the milk of the breast and the bitter honey that pours from the womb, all that is fluid, melting, dissolute and dissolvent, all the pus and dirt that in flowing is purified, that loses its sense of origin, that makes the great circuit toward death and dissolution. The great incestuous wish is to flow on, one with time, to merge the great image of the beyond with the here and now. A fatuous, suicidal wish that is constipated by words and paralyzed by thought.

To be a poet, I realized, a true poet, was to become the Avatar of humanity incarnate; to accept the mantle of poet is to carry the cross of the Son of Man, to suffer the birth pangs of the Soul-Mother of Humanity. “To be a true poet is to become God.” Well, Martin, old colleague, old chum, you’re carrying the cross and suffering the pangs, but are you any closer to becoming God? Or do you just feel like some poor idiot who’s had a three-meter javelin shoved through his belly, feeling cold steel where your liver used to be? It hurts, doesn’t it? I feel your hurt. I feel my hurt. In the end, it doesn’t matter a damn bit. We thought we were special, opening our perceptions, honing our empathy, spilling that cauldron of shared pain onto the dance floor of language and then trying to make a minuet out of all that chaotic hurt. It doesn’t matter a damn bit. We’re no avatars, no sons of god or man. We’re only us, scribbling our conceits alone, reading alone, and dying alone.

The souvenir hunters were prowling among them, carefully ripping insignia off tunics, slipping rings off fingers, or pistols off belts. There was Souvenirs himself, stepping gingerly from corpse to corpse, armed with his plyers and a dentist flashlight that he had had the forethought to purchase in Melbourne. I stood among the heaps of dead, they lay crumpled, useless, defunct. The vital force was fled. A bullet or a mortar fragment had torn a hole in these frail vessels, and the substance had leapt out. The mysteries of the universe had once inhabited these lulling lumps, had given each an identity, a way of walking, perhaps a special habit of address or a way with words or a knack of putting color on canvas. They had been so different then, now they were nothing, heaps of nothing. Can a bullet or a mortar fragment do this? Does this force, this mystery, I mean this soul, does this spill out on the ground along with the blood? No. It is somewhere, I know it. For this red and yellow lump I look down upon this instant was once a man. And the thing that energized him, the word that gave to airy nothing a local habitation and a name, the word from a higher word this cannot have been obliterated by a quarter inch of heated metal. The mystery of the universe has departed him and it is no good to say that the riddle is solved. The mystery is over because it has changed residences. The thing that shaped the flare of that nostril, that broadened that arm now bleeding, that wrought so fine that limply lying hand, that thing exists still and has still the power to flare that nostril, to bend that arm to clench that fist exactly as it did before. Because it is gone you cannot say it will not return; even though you may say it has never yet returned-you cannot say that it will not. It is blasphemy to say a bit of metal has destroyed life, just as it is presumptuous to say that because life has disappeared it has been destroyed. I stood among the heaps of the dead and I knew-no, I felt that death is only a sound we make to signify the Thing we do not know.

we watched them from our high window and they looked small—they might have been dolls upon a clock, or beads on trailing threads. They spilled into the yards and formed three great elliptical loops, and within a second of their doing that, I could not have said which was the first prisoner to have entered the ground, and which the last, for the loops were seamless, and the women all dressed quite alike, in frocks of brown and caps of white, and with pale blue kerchiefs knotted at their throats. It was only from their poses that I caught the humanity of them: for though they all walked at the same dull pace, there were some, I saw, with drooping heads, and some that limped; some with bodies stiff and hugged against the sudden chill, a few poor souls with faces lifted to the sky—and one, I think, who even raised her eyes to the window that we stood at, and gazed blankly at us. There were all the women of the gaol there, almost three hundred of them, ninety women to each great wheeling line. And in the corner of the yards stood a pair of dark-cloaked matrons, who must stand and watch the prisoners until the exercise is complete.

Lost In The World" (feat. Justin Vernon of Bon Iver) [Sample From "Woods": Justin Vernon] I'm up in the woods, I'm down on my mind I'm building a still to slow down the time I'm up in the woods, I'm down on my mind I'm building a still to slow down the time I'm up in the woods, I'm down on my mind I'm building a still to slow down the time [Chorus 2x:] I'm lost in the world, I'm down on my mind I'm new in the city, and I'm down for the night Down for the night Said she's down for the night [Kanye West:] You're my devil, you're my angel You're my heaven, you're my hell You're my now, you're my forever You're my freedom, you're my jail You're my lies, you're my truth You're my war, you're my truce You're my questions, you're my proof You're my stress and you're my masseuse Mama-say mama-say ma-ma-coo-sah Lost in this plastic life, Let's break out of this fake ass party Turn this into a classic night If we die in each other's arms we still get laid in the afterlife If we die in each other's arms we still get laid [Chorus:] (I'm lost in the world) Run from the lights, run from the night, (I'm down on my mind) Run for your life, I'm new in the city, and I'm down for the night Down for the night Down for the night I'm lost in the world, been down for my whole life, I'm new in the city but I'm down for the night Down for the night Down for the night Who will survive in America? Who will survive in America? Who will survive in America? [Chorus:] I'm lost in the world, I'm down on my mind I'm new in the city, and I'm down for the night Down for the night Said she's down for the night I'm lost in the world, I'm down on my mind I'm new in the city and I'm goin' for a ride Goin' for a ride I'm lost in the world, been down for my whole life I'm new in the city but I'm down the for the night Down for a night, down for a good time [Gil-Scott Heron:] Us living as we do upside down. And the new word to have is revolution. People don't even want to hear the preacher spill or spiel because God's whole card has been thoroughly piqued. And America is now blood and tears instead of milk and honey. The youngsters who were programmed to continue fucking up woke up one night digging Paul Revere and Nat Turner as the good guys. America stripped for bed and we had not all yet closed our eyes. The signs of truth were tattooed across our open ended vagina. We learned to our amazement the untold tale of scandal. Two long centuries buried in the musty vault, hosed down daily with a gagging perfume. America was a bastard, the illegitimate daughter of the mother country whose legs were then spread around the world and a rapist known as freedom, free doom. Democracy, liberty, and justice were revolutionary code names that preceded the bubbling bubbling bubbling bubbling bubbling in the mother country's crotch What does Webster say about soul? All I want is a good home and a wife And our children and some food to feed them every night. After all is said and done build a new route to China if they'll have you. Who will survive in America? Who will survive in America? Who will survive in America? Who will survive in America?

Saturday evening, on a quiet lazy afternoon, I went to watch a bullfight in Las Ventas, one of Madrid's most famous bullrings. I went there out of curiosity. I had long been haunted by the image of the matador with its custom made torero suit, embroidered with golden threads, looking spectacular in his "suit of light" or traje de luces as they call it in Spain. I was curious to see the dance of death unfold in front of me, to test my humanity in the midst of blood and gold, and to see in which state my soul will come out of the arena, whether it will be shaken and stirred, furious and angry, or a little bit aware of the life embedded in every death. Being an avid fan of Hemingway, and a proponent of his famous sentence "About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after,” I went there willingly to test myself. I had heard atrocities about bullfighting yet I had this immense desire to be part of what I partially had an inclination to call a bloody piece of cultural experience. As I sat there, in front of the empty arena, I felt a grandiose feeling of belonging to something bigger than anything I experienced during my stay in Spain. Few minutes and I'll be witnessing a painting being carefully drawn in front of me, few minutes and I will be part of an art form deeply entrenched in the Spanish cultural heritage: the art of defying death. But to sit there, and to watch the bull enter the arena… To watch one bull surrounded by a matador and his six assistants. To watch the matador confronting the bull with the capote, performing a series of passes, just before the picador on a horse stabs the bull's neck, weakening the neck muscles and leading to the animal's first loss of blood... Starting a game with only one side having decided fully to engage in while making sure all the odds will be in the favor of him being a predetermined winner. It was this moment precisely that made me feel part of something immoral. The unfair rules of the game. The indifferent bull being begged to react, being pushed to the edge of fury. The bull, tired and peaceful. The bull, being teased relentlessly. The bull being pushed to a game he isn't interested in. And the matador getting credits for an unfair game he set. As I left the arena, people looked at me with mocking eyes. Yes, I went to watch a bull fight and yes the play of colors is marvelous. The matador’s costume is breathtaking and to be sitting in an arena fills your lungs with the sands of time. But to see the amount of claps the spill of blood is getting was beyond what I can endure. To hear the amount of claps injustice brings is astonishing. You understand a lot about human nature, about the wars taking place every day, about poverty and starvation. You understand a lot about racial discrimination and abuse (verbal and physical), sex trafficking, and everything that stirs the wounds of this world wide open. You understand a lot about humans’ thirst for injustice and violence as a way to empower hidden insecurities. Replace the bull and replace the matador. And the arena will still be there. And you'll hear the claps. You've been hearing them ever since you opened your eyes.

I stood among the heaps of dead. They lay crumpled, useless, defunct. The vital force was fled. A bullet or a mortar fragment had torn a hole in these frail vessels and the substance had leaked out. The mystery of the universe had once inhabited these lolling lumps, had given each an identity, a way of walking, perhaps a special habit of address or a way with words or a knack of putting color on canvas. They had been so different, then. Now they were nothing, heaps of nothing. Can a bullet or a mortar fragment do this? Does this force, this mystery, I mean this soul — does this spill out on the ground along with the blood? No. It is somewhere, I know it. For this red-and-yellow lump I look down upon this instant was once a man, and the thing that energized him, the Word that gave “to airy nothing a local habitation and a name,” the Word from a higher Word — this cannot have been obliterated by a quarter-inch of heated metal. The mystery of the universe has departed him, and it is no good to say that the riddle is solved, the mystery is over — because it has changed residences. The thing that shaped the flare of that nostril, that broadened that arm now bleeding, that wrought so fine that limply lying hand — that thing exists still, and has still the power to flare that nostril, to bend that arm, to clench that fist exactly as it did before. Because it is gone you cannot say it will not return; even though you may say it has never yet returned — you cannot say that it will not. It is blasphemy to say a bit of metal has destroyed life, just as it is presumptuous to say that because life has disappeared it has been destroyed. I stood among the heaps of the dead and I knew — no, I felt that death is only a sound we make to signify the Thing we do not know.

Dhiren broke the silence by starting to hum a tune under his breath,,,, 'The smile of the moon has spilled over its banks'......I was filled with - with what? An affectionate contempt? A sense of ridicule? Shock that Dhiren, the earthy, self-styled tough guy, had any truck with the kind of music he'd consider effeminate? Tagore seemed to be carried inside all Bengalis, regardless of class or social background, like some inheritable disease, silent, unknown, until it manifested itself at the unlikeliest of times. How irredeemably middle class all this was: The Little Red Book and On Practice on the one hand; on the other hand, the poetry of Jibanananda Das in his cloth sidebag and a coy, cloying Tagore song almost involuntary on his lips. There really was no hope of escape for us. ...... For god's sake, Mao by day and Tagore by moonlight? Dhiren didn't miss a beat - That's quintessential Bengali soul for you.

The animal soul, the intelligent soul, and two kinds of knowing There's a part of us that's like an itch. Call it the animal soul, a foolishness that, when we're in it, makes hundreds of others around us itchy. And there is an intelligent soul with another desire, more like sweet basil or the feel of a breeze. Listen and be thankful even for scolding that comes from the intelligent soul. It flows out close to where you flowed out. But that itchiness wants to put food in our mouths that will make us sick, feverish with the aftertaste of kissing a donkey's rump. It's like blackening your robe against a kettle without being anywhere near a table of companionship. The truth of being human is an empty table made of soul intelligence. Gradually reduce what you give your animal soul, the bread that after all overflows from sunlight. The animal soul itself spilled out and sprouted from the other. Taste more often what nourishes your clear light, and you'll have less use for the smoky oven. You'll bury that baking equipment in the ground! There are two kinds of knowing: one acquired, as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts from books and from what the teacher says, collecting information from the traditional sciences as well as the new sciences. With such intelligence you rise in the world. You get ranked ahead or behind others with regard to your competence in retaining information. YOu stroll with this intelligence in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more marks on your tablets. There is another kind of tablet, one already completed inside you. A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness in the center of your chest. This intelligence does not turn yellow or stagnate. It's fluid, and it doesn't move from outside to inside through the conduits of plumbing-learning. This second knowing is a fountainhead from within you moving out. Drink from there!

Spill-what’s the deal with Hottie McDreamMan?” “Sage?” I laughed. “No, I mean Minister Sanders.” She threw a pillow at me. “Of course I mean Sage! He’s the one, right? The guy from your dreams. Oh my God-he’s real and he’s hot! Does he kiss as well in real life as he did in your dreams?” “I wouldn’t know,” I admitted. “We haven’t kissed.” “What are you waiting for?” “So the whole randomly-popping-up-in-pictures thing doesn’t bother you?” “Nope.” “The whole strange-cultists-chasing-after-him? That doesn’t bother you either?” “Nobody’s perfect, Clea.” “How about if I told you he might be a serial killer? Would that bother you?” “Debatable. Elaborate.” I told her about the nightmares and about what I’d seen in his house. As I unrolled the story, her expression went from flip and giddy to openmouthed and riveted. “Oh my God, Clea.” “Crazy, right? And I still have no idea how he got into all those pictures.” “That part’s easy.” “Really?” “Of course,” she said. “You’re soulmates. “Rayna…” “Fine, I know, you don’t like that word. But you can’t possibly deny that you have a deep, powerful soul connection. By definition you have that. You said yourself, he found you in four different countries and four different times. Out of all the people in the world at any given time, he found you. The only possible way he could have done that is if your souls were connected. He’s a soul-seeking missile.” “But he told me he wasn’t there for any of the pictures.” “Yes, he was! Don’t you get it, Clea? Your souls are connected-he’s always with you, whether he’s there physically or not. And you’re the one who told me about cameras capturing people’s souls, right? So that’s what it’s doing-capturing the soul that’s always with you, because you’re always connected. It’s very romantic.” I thought about what she said, ignoring the last sentence because I knew by now that everything was very romantic to Rayna. “Okay,” I ceded, “I’ll give you the connection. But what about the serial killer thing? What fi we’re connected because he tracks these women down, acts like he loves them, and then kills them?” “Kills you. You’re them.” “Yeah, thanks, that’s a much nicer way to put it,” I said, rolling my eyes.

A writer toils to combat the insufficiency plaguing his or her life. Every writer seeks to ward off the corrosive obliteration wrought by the passage of time upon memory by capturing on paper his or her present day thoughts on life. For these intrepid souls, writing not only entails a lifetime of work it also represents their very lifeblood spilled out onto sheets of virgin white paper. Writers’ inkblot of words forms a pictograph for present and future generations to view; their thoughtful elucidations speak to us from the grave. Writers’ words transcend time by creating indelible images that survive wars, famines, epidemics, and censorship. Thanks to great writers, every man, woman, or child can escape the confines of their own cloistered environment and converse with other people of every occupation and lifestyle whose communal heartbeats form the bloodstream of every city. Thanks to literary figures, each reader can peer into the depths of past generations whose eclectic filament forms the ever-evolving equitable eye in humankinds’ collective consciousness, or colloquially what we refer to as humanity.

A few chimes ago, however, the screams had fallen mysteriously silent. “Do you think the torture masters have tired themselves out?” Gaelen pondered with black humor. “More likely, we’re next, and they’ve just gone to sharpen their blades,” Tajik said. Locked up in the room with them, Farel gave a grunting laugh of amusement. “Could be. They’ve been using them enough.” “You know,” Gil announced, “as rescues go, I have to say, this one pretty much scorches rultshart turds.” About a man length from the source of Gil’s voice came Rijonn’s rumbling agreement. “Tairen turds.” “I told you,” Gaelen said, “I had backups. I don’t know what happened to them.” A metallic scraping sound came from the direction of the door, and they all fell silent. The scraping sound was followed by the distinctive click of the latch lifting free. The door swung inward, and a sliver of light—the first in bells—spilled into the cell, widening rapidly as the door opened more fully. Two armored silhouettes stood in the doorway. “Well, aren’t you a sorry sight,” a familiar Fey voice drawled. “Kieran?” Gaelen sat up straight. There wasn’t much in life that could surprise him, but the appearance of Kieran vel Solande in the heart of Boura Fell definitely did. “What are you doing here? “ “Apparently, uncle, I’m saving you from a very nasty demise, though gods know, I’m sure it won’t take me long to regret it.” Gaelen grinned, too pleased to take offense at his nephew’s cheek. “Well, it took you long enough,” Bel groused, holding up his hands as Kiel ran over with a key to unlock his sel’dor manacles. “I was starting to get worried.” Gaelen turned on Bel in disbelief. “You knew they were coming? “ Bel arched a brow. “You think the High Mage is the only one who plans backups for his backups?” Rijonn laughed, slow and deep.

Life is pretty short yet magnanimous if we know just how to live right. It isn't that easy, it takes a lot of our soul, sometimes too many broken pieces to finally come together in binding a masterpiece that smiles like a solitary star forever gazing around at the music of an eternal cosmos. The most brutal yet beautiful truth about Life is that It is marked, marked with Time where every moment takes us closer to death, it doesn't have to sound or feel bad or scary because death is the most inevitable truth in this mortal world. While the knowledge of death jolts our mind with the uncertainty of Life, clutches us in the emotion of fear to think of pain or the loss of bonds, when we acknowledge that as a part of our souls' journey and take every moment as our precious gift, a blessing to experience this Life with its beautiful garden of emotions blossoming with wonderful smiles that we can paint on others, then we make our Life magnanimous, then we make even the very face of death as that of an angel coming to take us to a different voyage, soaked in a lot of memories and experiences beautifully binding our soul. I have realised that when we live each day as if it's the last day of our life, we become more loving and gentle to everyone around and especially to our own selves. We forgive and love more openly, we grace and embrace every opportunity we get to be kind, to stay in touch with everything that truly matters. I have realised that when we rise every morning with gratitude knowing that the breath of air still passes through our body, just in the mere understanding that we have one more day to experience Life once again, we stay more compassionate towards everything and everyone around and invest more of our selves into everything and everyone that truly connect and resonate with our soul. I have realised that when we consciously try to be good and kind, no matter however bad or suffocating a situation is we always end up taking everything at its best holding on to the firm grip of goodness, accepting everything as a part of our souls' lesson or just a turn of Time or Fate and that shapes into our strength and roots our core with the truest understanding of Life, the simple act of going on and letting go. Letting go of anything and everything that chains our Soul while going on with a Heart open to Love and a Soul ready to absorb all that falls along the pathway of this adventure called Life. I have realised that when we are kind and do anything good for another person, that gives us the most special happiness, something so pure that even our hearts don't know how deep that joy permeates inside our soul. I have realised that at the end of the day we do good not because of others but because of our own selves, for if tomorrow death comes to grace me I hope to smile and say I have Lived, loved unconditionally and embraced forgiveness, kindness and goodness and all the other colours of Love with every breath I caught, I have lived a Life magnanimous. So each time someone's unkind towards you, hold back and smile, and try to give your warmth to that person. Because Kindness is not a declaration of who deserves it, it's a statement of who you are. So each time some pieces of your heart lay scattered, hold them up and embrace everyone of them with Love. Because Love is not a magic potion that is spilled from a hollow space, it's a breath of eternity that flows through the tunnel of your soul. So each time Life puts up a question of your Happiness, answer back with a Smile of Peace. Because Happiness is not what you look for in others, it's what you create in every passing moment, with the power of Life, that is pretty short when we see how counted it stands in days but actually turns out absolutely incredibly magnanimous when loved and lived in moments.

Then, as if he’d figured out what produced the maximum reaction in her, he switched back to Chopin. Just like that night in her childhood, the music slipped past her defenses and produced a deep contraction inside her, equal parts pain and pleasure. It went deeper still, until the tears began to rise, and she could only sit there, crying, trying to display only her expressionless left side so he wouldn’t notice. She’d been numb and it had felt good. Okay, not good. But safe. Manageable. He kept playing, soulful, stirring pieces that seemed chosen for their ability to pierce her heart deeper, deeper. She was crying audibly now, and he stopped and regarded her impassively. It couldn’t have been more awkward. She worked to compose herself and only then did she look up and meet his eyes. “Well,” he said, “I think it’s safe to say that dance is not done with you yet.” She stared at him in disbelief. “You did this on purpose. Tried to provoke a reaction.” “I suppose I did.” What a horrible, disreputable person he was. No wonder Misha had seemed anxious about having him around this weekend. “That was a pretty shitty thing to do.” “Not at all,” he replied. “I was just helping you see where you stand with your art. You need it. It nourishes you. That’s not going to go away just because you’re sidelined for a year or two.” “Two years?” She wasn’t sure which appalled her more, his words or his casual attitude. “Whatever. Point being, you’re still a dancer. It couldn’t be more obvious. That gorgeous body of yours, the way it moves. The way you’re sitting there now, all swept away by the music. You’re a dancer. You can’t not be one. Ever.” The truth of this, the twin emotions of fragile hope and crushing despair, crashed into her. He was right. And right then, the truth hurt. Now that the numbness was gone, it all hurt. The tears rose up again and spilled out. She heard Misha come in through the front door. David looked anxious. “Look, Dena. I just want to make sure you’re looking at the issue clearly.” Misha