The Rules of Magic

by Alice Hoffman

“I remember everything about you. I was waiting all that time for you to love me.”

they set the heron up in the window of the shop and named the bird Edgar, for Edgar Allan Poe’s ghost was said to roam their neighborhood, and for a time from 1844 to 1845 he had lived at 85 West Third Street, writing “The Raven.”

She had a secret that she carried with her, and it hurt, as if she stored a stone beside her heart. It was her hatred of herself that was her burden, and it grew each day. At first it was tiny, a mere pebble, then it was as big as her heart, and then it was the largest thing inside her.

You are falling, you’re in a house you don’t recognize and yet you want to be here, you have actually wanted to be here all of your life.

Isn’t that what love makes you do? Go on trying even when you’re through. Go on even when you’re made of ash, when there’s nothing left inside you but the past?

Ostara, the spring equinox, when eggshells must be scattered in a garden, for new growth and transformation is possible, even for those who consider themselves to be unfortunate.

We all come to ruin, we turn to dust, but whom we love is the thing that lasts.”

In this short Life That only lasts an hour How much—how little—is Within our power.

There was that grin, so how could she be annoyed? Still, she protested. “I was never difficult.”