She was all those things. She was indeed the perfect package on the surface…but below it, I sensed she was so much more. Messy and passionate and raw and creative—a cyclone forced into an eggshell. Small
wonder the shell had broken.
"I clasp her chin in a firm hold, bringing the knife to her throat and pressing the sharp edge to her pulse.
I want to slice it open, deep and gaping, to see her blood spill down her body.
But I also want to kiss her, goddammit."
Poppy was one minute early, and the easy but precise way she walked through the door told me that she was accustomed to being prompt, took
pleasure in it, was the kind of person who could never understand why other people weren’t on time.
(Us Poppy Us)
S volkámi zhit’, po-vólch’i vyt’
Resilience
Her hazel eyes flickered up to mine, green and brown pools of curiosity and intelligent energy, green and brown pools that reflected grief and
confusion if you cared to look long enough. I recognized it because I had worn such a look for years after Lizzy’s death, except in Poppy’s case, I suspected that the person she was grieving—the person she’d lost—was herself.
Lizzy’s death had nearly killed me. But it had killed Mom. And every
day after that, it was like we kept Mom artificially alive with hugs and jokes
and visits now that we were older, but every now and again, you could see
that a part of her had never fully healed, never really resurrected, and our
church had been a huge part of that, first driving Lizzy to kill herself and
then turning their backs on us when the story went public.
Sometimes I felt like I was fighting for the wrong side. But who would
make it better if I didn’t?
I pulled Mom into a hug, her face crumpling as I wrapped my arms
around her. “She’s with God now,” I murmured, half-priest, half-son, some
chimera of both. “God has her, I promise.”
"I’m not Brandon King. I’m not the broken entity who sees black ink instead of his reflection in the mirror. Not the weak man who’s more often than not swallowed by disgusting nausea and the terrifying notion of nothingness. I’m just me."
“You cut yourself?” My words are low, but they’re so loud in the silence. “Why?” “Because I’m fucked up.” His voice sounds like death’s lullaby, anguished and shattered. “Because I look at myself in the mirror and get the urge to shatter it to pieces. Because I’ve been haunted by the bitter taste of nausea and self-loathing for so long, I don’t know how to live without them. I was doing fine, pretending and putting on a façade, so why the fuck did you ruin that? Why did you come into my life and destroy every wall I built and ruin every lie I told myself? Why do you touch me like I’m beautiful? Why don’t you hate me when I can’t stand my-fucking-self?”
desperate for a gulp of air
I was supposed to be a shepherd of the flock, not the wolf.
It is astonishing how easily emotions can turn into a fierce force unable to be contained by the human body.
When I spoke again, I didn’t bother with any of the normal reassurancesor spiritual platitudes. Instead I said honestly, “I don’t know if everything will be okay. It may not be. You may think you are the lowest point now and then look up one day and see that it’s gotten so much worse.” I looked down at my hands, the hands that had pulled my oldest sister from a rope after she hung herself in my parents’ garage. “You may not ever be able to
get out of bed in the morning with that security. That moment of okay may never come. All you can do is try to find a new balance, a new starting point. Find whatever love is left in your life and hold on to it tightly. And
one day, things will have gotten less gray, less dull.
“What if…do you ever have people who have done really bad things?”
I considered my answer carefully. “We’re all sinners in the eyes of God.
Even me. The point is not to make you feel guilt or categorize the magnitude of your sin, but to—”
“Don’t give me that seminary horseshit,” she said sharply. “I’m asking
you a real question. I did something bad. Really bad. And I don’t know what happens next.”
Her voice cracked on the last word, in her voice—there was real pain and uncertainty and confusion. And I wanted to make it better for her.
“I need to know that everything will be okay,” she continued quietly.
“That I will be able to live with myself.”
“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
I felt
A strange delight in causing my decay.
—Robert Browning, “Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession”
Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.
—Donna Tartt, The Secret History
In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.
—Carl Jung
"But let me tell you what I think about secrets before you decide if you want me to tell you one. Secrets make life more interesting. You can be in a crowded room with someone and touch them without touching, just with a look, because they know a part of you no one else knows. And whenever you're with them, the two of you are alone, because the you they see no one else can see."
~Moth Smoke
I love her voice. It has the soul of a whisper, meant only for the person she's speaking to, even when she isn't speak-ing softly.
~Moth Smoke
submitted by
uploaded by
profile:
Sorry! Ap apne item ya profile ko report nahi kar saktey, na hi apne ap ko block kar saktey hain