On the Savage Side

by Tiffany McDaniel

“A witch is not a pointy hat or a broom or warts. 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. But there are some things that not even fire can destroy. One of those things is the strength of a woman. Don’t you want to be a woman like that? A woman with power?”

“Power is not only physical. It’s not some muscleman lifting all the weights. It’s much more than that. It’s being smart. It means you endure.”

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

A woman who is hard to tame is a woman who is easy to blame.

Addiction is a thief. It steals the minutes from the day. The color of the sky. It steals the hero from the story, the leaves on the trees, the answer to the question, Who am I? The thief doesn’t go completely away because you’ve stopped holding the needle to your arm. Sobriety is just a better hiding spot for the minutes of the day, the color of the sky, the answer to the question, Who am I?

Our wars have been fought not with the sobriety that tradition so admires, but with the use and the aid of enough narcotics to super our heroes.

Destruction is just a phase. Sometimes we have to break like an artifact in order to be discovered whole.

“I don’t remember no hourglass.” “That’s because Daffy broke it.” Aunt Clover stared at the floor. “You can’t break time and expect to get away with it.”

“It’s a beautiful war, isn’t it?” He looked up at me. “What is?” I asked. “Life.”