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To the ones who hunger— for love, for time, or simply to be free
Bury my bones in the midnight soil, plant them shallow and water them deep, and in my place will grow a feral rose, soft red petals hiding sharp white teeth.
Born restless, her father used to say. Which was fine for a son, but bad for a daughter.
“And how is a miracle different from a spell? Who is to say the saint was not a witch?”
“Nature gives us what we need,”
“Careful. In nature, beauty is a warning. The pretty ones are often poisonous.”
As if she did not see the hunger in his eyes and know that she could use it.
When to be the predator, and when to play the part of prey.
“You will learn, it is better to bend than to break.” María stared into the hearth. “Why should I be the one who bends?”
like every part of her is undecided, stuck midstride.
There are two parts to every answer. The part that’s said, and the part that isn’t. Which is how she knows that Ysabel is holding back more than just her cards.
“The woods want to keep me / the ground wants to eat me The trees want to hold me / can’t find my way home. The night’s getting dark now / the air’s getting cold So tired of walking / can’t find my way home.”
“Children can be a blessing, in the right bed. And a kind of sickness in the wrong one.
“Knowledge is power, María. Never turn it down.
“One can be alone without feeling lonely,” she muses. “One can feel lonely without being alone.”
“Bury my bones in the midnight soil,” he begins, infusing the words with the air of theater. “Plant them shallow and water them deep. And in my place will grow a feral rose.” He leans down to Renata and cups her face, running a thumb across her bottom lip. “Soft red petals hiding sharp white teeth.”
“A feral rose,”
“You should always be found ahead of your corpses, and never in their wake.”
“We grow in the same soil, it is true, but some of us wither there, and some of us thrive. In time, you learn,” he adds, eyes dropping to the trinkets layered at her throat, “which of us makes better monsters.”
Destroy our hearts, and we are destroyed as well. So, I suggest you learn to guard yours better.”
“When the world pushes you, push back.”)
word
Because rage shatters out, not in.
Love. As terrible and bottomless as hunger.
“Desire and necessity are different things.”
“Control is knowing yourself well enough to know your limits.”
What is the point, she thinks, of loving something you are doomed to lose? Of holding on to someone who cannot hold on to you?
Matteo, who has kept his mind well guarded all these years, who to her has always been opaque. But now his grief is splashed against the floor, it slicks the walls like paint. It is all Sabine can smell. All she can taste.
“It is our nature, isn’t it? To persist. Continue on when others can’t.”
“We are made for many things,” muses Sabine. “But surrender isn’t one of them.”
“all things wither in the end.”
“One thing you learn when you live as long as we do, is that nothing’s permanent. Who you were isn’t who you have to be.”
From that moment on, she insisted, she would read only romance. As if love and horror could not go hand in hand.
“You will be happy there as well,” she said. “Do you know why?” She took something from her pocket, a small bundle of dried flowers, the ones that grew wild at the edges of the yard. “Because you are the kind of bloom that thrives in any soil.
“The world will try to make you small. It will tell you to be modest, and meek. But the world is wrong. You should get to feel and love and live as boldly as you want.”
Some people keep their heart tucked so deep, they hardly know it’s there. But you have always worn it like a second skin. It will make your life harder. But it will also make it beautiful.
“Did you find someone brave enough to love you?”
Why does Charlotte stay? That is like asking—why stay inside a house on fire? Easy to say when you are standing on the street, a safe distance from the flames. Harder when you are still inside, convinced you can douse the blaze before it spreads, or rushing room to room, trying to save what you love before it burns.
There is no violence in her voice, but what’s left is somehow worse. This languid monster in her lover’s flesh.
“The point is, we find ways to hold on to who we were. In hopes it will keep us from becoming someone else.”
Time doesn’t heal. It just wears you down.
Maybe that’s what death is, and we just don’t know it. A chance to play again.
