She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanc...
But my brain winds and wends. Back and forth. Up and down. It feels like the county fair has inhabited my mind-- complete with sketchy rides, carnies, and sugar-amped kids crying over lost balloons. So loud and disorienting. I want it to pack up and ...
I pictured the two of them alone. Perhaps showering together, as Rome and I liked to do. My stomach clenched painfully, amusement forgotten. “Cody, will you take me to the nearest clinic? I need someone to dig the knife out of my back. Lexis might ...
How hard it is to kill hope! Time after time, one thinks one has trodden it down, stamped it to death. Time after time, like a noxious insect, it begins to stir again, it shivers back again into a faint tremulous life. Once more it worms its way into...
Yet the organic label itself—like every other such label in the supermarket—is really just an imperfect substitute for direct observation of how a food is produced, a concession to the reality that most people in an industrial society haven’t t...
We'd just shared the last beer and slung the empty can out the window at a stop sign and were just waiting back to get the feel of the day, swimming in that kind of tasty drowsiness that comes over you after a day of going hard at something you enjoy...
The thing about a mom is that she's always there. She's the one who rubs your back when you have the flu, who manages to notice you have no clean underwear and does your wash for you, who stocks the refrigerator with all the foods you love without ha...
Nate wrapped his arms around her, holding her close. "Let's get you back and I'll build you a fire." She liked the way he said it. He'd build HER a fire.” ... As they walked toward the house, he reached out and took her hand. The gloves blocked the...
Nate came back into the kitchen, his hair slightly messy from having had the beanie on. The gray thermal Henley he wore gave him a rugged, all-man look that made her heart skip a couple beats. For someone who was the opposite of her type, he sure was...
Lacking a clear formula for making decisions, we get reactive and fall back on familiar, comfortable ways to decide what to do. Pinballing through our day like a confused character in a B-horror movie, we end up running up the stairs instead of out t...
The funny thing about a lie is that once it has been said and believed, it lives and becomes. It can't be taken back. It sucks all the air from you until you give up and it takes over and you forget how to breathe on your own. It is like those parasi...
There are a good many books, are there not, my boy?” said Mr. Brownlow, observing the curiosity with which Oliver surveyed the shelves that reached from the floor to the ceiling. “A great number, sir,” replied Oliver; “I never saw so many.”...
But just then, for that fraction of time, it seems as though all things are possible. You can look across the limitations of your own life, and see that they are really nothing. In that moment when time stops, it is as though you know you could under...
Yes, now you know. Now you know! That's what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those...of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To be always...
I've already seen what you've got," Liz said, completely out of patience. "Now gimme my wine." "It's not that. I want to show you something at my place." Do I have Idiot stamped on my forehead? They both knew what would happen if they were alone at h...
Kuan Yin Speaks on The Law of the Spiritualization (Transformation) of Matter: “The earth is trying to teach humans that everything is spirit…Being human is an opportunity to bring spirit into all that is material…The quality and intensity of r...
Up the still, glistening beaches, Up the creeks we will hie, Over banks of bright seaweed The ebb-tide leaves dry. We will gaze, from the sand-hills, At the white, sleeping town; At the church on the hill-side— And then come back down. Singing: "Th...
If God gave it to me," we say "it's mine. I can do what I want with it." No. The truth is that it is ours to thank Him for and ours to offer back to Him, ours to relinquish, ours to lose, ours to let go of - if we want to find our true selves, if we ...
Sometimes there are things we don't understand even about ourselves. Sometimes we run out of the time to keep trying to unravel them, and we have to sit back and content ourselves with a shrug. But I think there are some things that we'd never unders...
If you haven't already, you will lose someone you can't live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and you never completely get over the loss of a deeply beloved person. But this is also good news. The person lives forever, in your broken hea...
Hold still, Meg, you’re dripping blood on my car seats.” I reached behind the passenger seat of Tennyson’s car looking for the white sheet she’d thrown in for mopping up bodily fluids. Quinn, sitting in the back seat, read my mind and handed ...