libba-bray

Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with his apron on. Cuts your throat and takes your bones, sells 'em off for a coupla stones.

The wind swoops over the tenements on Orchard Street, where some of those starry-eyed dreams have died and yet other dreams are being born into squalor and poverty, an uphill climb. It gives a slap to the laundry stretched on lines between tenements, over dirty, broken streets where, even at this hour, hungry children scour the bins for food. The wind has existed forever. It has seen much in this country of dreams and soap ads, old horrors and bloodshed. It has played mute witness to its burning witches, and has walked along a Trail of Tears; it has seen the slave ships release their human cargo, blinking and afraid, into the ports, their only possession a grief they can never lose.

I've heard it said that God is in the details. It's the same with the truth. Leave out the details, the crucial heart, and you can damn someone with the bare bones of it.

One could argue that it's romantic to die for love. Of course, then you're dead and unable to take that honeymoon trip to the Alps with all the other fashionable young couples, which is a shame.

The land has a memory. Every stream and river runs with a confession of sorts, history whispered over rocks, lifted in the beaks of birds at a stream, carried out to the sea. Buffalo thunder across plains whose soil was watered with the blood of battles long since relegated to musty books on forgotten shelves. Fields once strewn with blue and gray now flower with uneasy buds. The slave master snaps the lash, and generations later, the ancestral scars remain.Under it all, the dead lie, remembering.

Brought to you by The Corporation: In your homes and in your pants.

Please, I'm a transgender former boy-bander. You think I don't know how to defend myself?

New Maxi-Pad Pets. Accessories for your period.Brought to you by The Corporation: In your homes andin your pants.

Agent Jones held Sinjin__ face in his hands. ____ going to make balloon animals. People need balloon animals.___ow right you are, strange delusional man,_ Sinjin said.

Her eyes take on that suspicious, wounded look girls get when they know they've fallen off the top rung of friendship and someone else has passed them, but they don't know when or how the change took place.

People always fear what they don't understand, Evangeline. History proves that.

We're all strangers connected by what we reveal, what we share, what we take away--our stories. I guess that's what I love about books--they are thin strands of humanity that tether us to one another for a small bit of time, that make us feel less alone or even more comfortable with our aloneness, if need be.

I'd like to thank readers. Every time you open a book, it is a strike against ignorance. Unless you're reading Sarah Palin.

I have done what they expected of me. I have curtsied for my Queen and made my debut. This is what I have anticipated eagerly for years. So why do I feel so unsatisfied? Everyone is merry. They haven't a care in the world. And perhaps that is it. How terrible it is to have no cares, no longings. I do not fit. I feel too deeply and want too much.

Careful there, Poet. I might start to believe you.

I'm an oddity of one, my strangeness too complicated to explain or share.

Oh, I didn't think it wise to hide it. Might not be able to find it again," I say, cheerily. "It's sitting in plain view on your chair in the great hall. I do hope that was the best place for it.

My whole life I__e been ordered about. Now I shall give the orders._ I__e never seen Felicity so wounded. __ot me,_ she says. __ never ordered you about._ __h, Fee._ The old Pippa surfaces for just a moment, hopeful and childlike. She pulls Felicity to her. Something I cannot name passes between them, and then Pip__ lips are on Fee__ in a deep kiss, as if they feed on one another, their fingers entwined in each other__ hair. And suddenly, I understand what I must have always known about them__he private talks, the close embraces, the tenderness of their friendship. A blush spreads across my neck at the thought. How could I not have seen it before?