I suppose we should send someone to make sure the queen does not come to the wall also,” the king jested. “I would say that it is too late for that, my lord,” a feminine voice answered from the group gathered in the courtyard. They all turned t...
When I penetrate into that house, if I ever do, it will be to go on turning, faster and faster, more and more convulsive, like a constipated dog, or one suffering from worms, overturning furniture, in the midst of my family all trying to embrace me a...
Sometimes events that lead us bereft of anything but grief just happen for no reason other than happenstance--a car turns left instead of right, a train is missed, a call comes too late--and the real test of our humanness is whether, in light of that...
I alone stretch out the heavens and tread on the waves of the sea. My way is in the whirlwind and the storm, and clouds are the dust of my feet. My arm is endued with power; my hand is strong, my right hand exalted. Death is naked before me; destruct...
Once she even successfully argued on behalf of my older brother, Dan, getting a BBGun, a weapon which he promptly turned against his younger siblings, outfitting us in helmet and leather jacket and instructing us to run across Eaton Park while he pra...
There's always a strange feeling you get when you come across one particular line by chance. It feels somehow significant. That's irrational of course, but humans are irrational creatures. Even the sturdiest, most down-to-earth chap will turn pale if...
Sometimes day and night reverse. Sometimes up goes down and down goes up, and love turns into hate, and the things you counted on get washed out from under your feet, leaving you pedaling in the air. Sometimes people stop loving you. And that's the k...
The way he said it spoke of an ache I recognized. I knew that no matter how similar they were, no two losses were the same, but despite his loss being from a different circumstance, I felt his sadness as my own. We sat there in silence with my hand r...
The dirty secret she’d learned about grief was that nobody wanted to hear about your loss a week after the funeral. People you’d once considered friends would turn their heads in church or cross to another side of a shopping mall to avoid the con...
A year ago on my twenty-third birthday, I rebuffed the advances of a beautiful young woman whom I did not love. Alas, she turned out to be a sorceress. She repaid me by casting a spell that forces every female I touch to fall into a frenzy of lust." ...
Who ordered the legs?” My eyes widened at the way Kyle Hamilton’s eyes roamed up and down my entire body. The smile on his face did something to the pit of my stomach. I knew the skirt looked good, but I still couldn’t believe a guy like him wa...
My darling goddaughter, Olivia, was the little girl of my friends, Max and Jeff. She was turning four, and it was time to transition her from her shortened toddler bed to a full-size big girl bed. It would be the bed where she'd have her childhood dr...
How do you know me, girl?” He asked, his voice caked with venom. There was movement from the curtains and the throng of vamps seemed to cry out as one, in a sound of pure surprise. My head turned towards the figure of a young man. He looked like an...
The public's abiding fascination with flaying saucers, C.G. Jung suggests, 'may be a spontaneous reaction of the subconscious to fear of the apparently insoluble political situation in the world that may lead at any moment to catastrophe. At such tim...
Take faith, for example. For many people in our world, the opposite of faith is doubt. The goal, then, within this understanding, is to eliminate doubt. But faith and doubt aren't opposites. Doubt is often a sign that your faith has a pulse, that it'...
We all know how it says it’s going to end, Dreamer, but no one knows for sure. That’s up to you, and your friends. It is the Four who shall decide whether or not it comes true, not a bunch of words written on a piece of paper. Not even,” he tur...
Military intervention cannot liberate women because it is embedded within a set of assumptions, beliefs, and social relations that reinforce and reproduce gender inequality, as well as other social inequalities within and across nation-states. Milita...
Patriarchal hip-hop ushered in a world where black males could declare that they were “keeping it real” when what they were really doing was taking the dead patriarchal protest of the black power movement and rearticulating it in forms that, thou...
Typical artist,' said Granny. 'He just painted the showy stuff in the front... And what about these cherubs? We're not going to get them too, are we? I don't like to see little babies flying through the air.' 'They turn up in a lot of old paintings,'...
I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you re...
Who would guess," he teased, "that I'd ever see you on a rooftop with straw in your hair?" Kit giggled. "Are you saying I've turned into a crow?" "Not exactly." His eyes were intensely blue with merriment. "I can still see the green feathers if I loo...