On the Savage Side

by Tiffany McDaniel

The first sin was believing we would never die. The second sin was believing we were alive in the first place.

All the roads here are not graveled in rock, girls, but with the woman’s scars, because only a woman’s scars are strong enough to bear something driving over them, again and again.”

A witch is merely a woman who is punished for being wiser than a man. That’s why they burned her. They tried to burn away her power because a woman who says more than she’s supposed to say, and does more than she’s supposed to do, is a woman they’ll try to silence and destroy.

Who do you tell about the demons when the demons are the ones who you tell?

Pain is there in the broken vases, the fractured poetry, the overwhelming music we have played for centuries. We belong to grief until the engine goes out. Then we belong to the dirt, our bodies identical to other fallen things.

What always seems to last are the miseries of the past. —Daffodil Poet

A daughter is a woman lost at sea. A mother is the one who saves her.

And a woman on both of her feet has inherited the ancient hope that all will be okay.”

I made the choice to take the needle, but I will say an addict was a child once, too. We had hopes and dreams of being something more. Our dream wasn’t to give ourselves away. That much is true.

I wish more people would think of this when they encounter an addict