The Summer That Melted Everything

by Tiffany McDaniel

Sometimes the things we believe we hear are really just our own shifting needs.

“A snake that could harm you, you don’t have much choice to kill. You wouldn’t be able to leave a cobra in your sock drawer. But a snake that is no threat will greatly define the man who decides to kill it anyways.”

I write my sins on a piece of foil and place it on the ground with a rock on its corner so the foil doesn’t get carried off. Then I go away from it. Go a distance from it because then, from afar, the sins become beautiful silver things that catch the light of the sun so brightly, heaven is left in want.

Hope is just a beautiful instance in the myth of the second chance.

He said it like a man tired of describing what lost means.

Maybe her love would be enough to paradise the hell. But then I realized, I couldn’t use her like that. Like a shield in the fray. She deserved to marry a man who loved her for all the things she was and not for all the armor she could be.

That color brought Elohim and his group together. It was the color of their devil, and they needed their devil to have a color so they could find him again.

You forget it is the camera we smile at, not the life behind.”

ALL LOVE LEADS to cannibalism. I know that now. Sooner or later, our hearts will devour, if not the object of our affections, our very selves.

And isn’t that the biggest tragedy of all? When a boy has to be the devil in order to be significant?

...if that doesn't stop you in your tracks...

They were not walking caves of nocturnal demons, scared of the sunlight and fresh air. In fact, the way they all went into court, they looked like cotton curtains of the sunniest, breeziest, most welcoming windows in all the world. They came not from underground lairs but from homes with flowers in vases and cookies in the oven. They were men who held the door open for the ladies who thanked them as they passed through.

Wow.