My mother's life was way too heavy for me.
My mother's life was way too heavy for me.
Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can't remember who we are or why we're here.
The world will give you that once in awhile, a brief timeout; the boxing bell rings and you go to your corner, where somebody dabs mercy on your beat-up life.
There's nothing like a song about lost love to remind you how everything precious can slip from the hinges where you've hung it so careful.
We walked along the river with the words streaming behind us like ribbons in the night.
You gotta imagine what's never been.
It was the oldest sound there was. Souls flying away.
Knowing can be a curse on a person's life. I'd traded in a pack of lies for a pack of truth, and I didn't know which one was heavier. Which one took the most strength to carry around? It was a ridiculous question, though, because once you know the truth, you can't ever go back and pick up your suitcase of lies. Heavier or not, the truth is yours now.
I don't remember what they said, only the fury of their words, how the air turned raw and full of welts. Later it would remind me of birds trapped inside a closed room, flinging themselves against the windows and the walls, against each other.
Now and then sprays of rain flew over and misted our faces. Every time I refused to wipe away the wetness. It made the world seem so alive to me. I couldn't help but envy the way a good storm got everyone's attention.
What's wrong with living in a dream world? You have to wake up.
I felt like I'd unzipped my skin and momentarily stepped out of it, leaving a crazy person in charge
Someone who thinks death is the scariest thing doesn't know a thing about life.
Where do you come from?"...This is the number one most-asked question in all of South Carolina. We want to know if you are one of us, if your cousin knows our cousin, if your little sister went to school with our big brother, if you go to the same Baptist church as our ex-boss. We are looking for ways our stories fit together.
I marveled at how mixed up people got when it came to love. I myself, for instance. It seemed like I was now thinking of Zach forty minutes out of every hour, Zach, who was an impossibility. That's what I told myself five hundred times: impossibility. I can tell you this much: the word is a great big log throw on the fires of love.
Sometimes I didn't even feel like getting out of bed. I took to wearing my days-of-the-week panties out of order. It could be Monday and I'd have on underwear saying Thursday. I just didn't care.
Where had I been that I didn't know about imaginary friends? I could see the point of it. How a lost part of yourself steps out and remind you who you could be with a little work.
Actually, you can be bad at something...but if you love doing it, that will be enough. - August Boatwright
I watched him, filled with tenderness and ache, wondering what it was that connected us. Was it the wounded places down inside people that sought each other out, that bred a kind of love between them?
Sometimes you want to fall on your knees and thank God in heaven for all the poor news reporting that goes on in the world.
You are my everlasting home. Don't you ever be afraid. I am enough. We are enough.
And I was struck all at once how life was out there going through its regular courses, and I was suspended, waiting, caught in a terrible crevice between living my life and not living it.
I wished she'd been smart enough, or loving enough, to realize everybody has burdens that crush them, only they don't give up their children.
Spinners take out the bad stuff, leave in the good. I've always thought how nice it would be to have spinners like this for human beings. Just toss them in and let the spinner do its work.
You can tell which girls lack mothers by the look of their hair...
And when you get down to it, Lily, that is the only purpose grand enough for a human life. Not just to love but to persist in love.
I wondered what it was like to be inside her, just a curl of flesh swimming in the darkness, the quiet things that had passed between us.
Standing there, I loved myself and I hated myself. That's what the black Mary did to me, made me feel my glory and my shame at the same time.
You don't have to place your hand on Mary's heart to get strength and consolation and rescue, and all the other things we need to get through life. You can place it right here on your own heart. Your own heart.
As I squatted on the grass at the edge of the woods, the pee felt hot between my legs. I watched in puddle in the dirt, the smell of it rising into the night. There was no difference between my piss and June's. That's what i thought when I looked at the dark circle on the ground. Piss is Piss.
If you need something from somebody always give that person a way to hand it to you.
Sunset is the saddest light there is.
You have to find a mother inside yourself. We all do. Even if we already have a mother, we still have to find this part of ourselves inside
At night I would lie in bed and watch the show, how bees squeezed through the cracks of my bedroom wall and flew circles around the room, making that propeller sound, a high-pitched zzzzzz that hummed along my skin. I watched their wings shining like bits of chrome in the dark and felt the longing build in my chest. The way those bees flew, not even looking for a flower, just flying for the feel of the wind, split my heart down its seam.
In the photograph by my bed my mother is perpetually smiling on me. I guess I have forgiven us both, although sometimes in the night my dreams will take me back to the sadness, and I have to wake up and forgive us again.
That's what I told myself five hundred times: impossibility. I can tell you this much: the word is a great big log thrown on the fires of love. ~Page 133.
You think you want to know something, and then once you do, all you can think about is erasing it from your mind.
Drifting off to sleep, I thought about her. How nobody is perfect. How you just have to close your eyes and breathe out and let the puzzle of the human heart be what it is.
It was the first time I'd ever said the words to another person, and the sound of them broke open my heart.
The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.
Honeybees depend not only on physical contact with the colony, but also require it's social companionship and support. Isolate a honeybee from her sisters and she will soon die.
Egg laying is the main thing, Lily. She's the mother of every bee in the hive, and they all depend on her to keep it going. I don't care what their job is--they know the queen is their mother. She's the mother of thousands.
It was the in-between time, before day leaves and night comes, a time I've never been partial to because of the sadness that lingers in the space between going and coming.
The whole problem with people is they don't know what matters and what doesn't.
I know you've run away - everybody gets the urge to do that some time - but sooner or later you'll want to go home.
Every human being on the face of the earth has a steel plate in his head, but if you lie down now and then and get still as you can, it will slide open like elevator doors, letting in all the secret thoughts that have been standing around so patiently, pushing the button for a ride to the top. The real troubles in life happen when those hidden doors stay closed for too long.
It's your time to live, don't mess it up.
The whole problem with people is...they know what matters, but they don't choose it.
I realized it for the first time in my life: there is nothing but mystery in the world, how it hides behind the fabric of our poor, browbeat days, shining brightly, and we don't even know it.
Every little thing wants to be loved.
© 2020 Inspirational Stories
© 2020 Inspirational Stories