Culture Commentary and Miscellaneous Musings
She wants to say, what you’re missing is that I’ve been happy. What you’re missing is that for the first time in years I don’t feel like a disease waiting to be happy or a problem to be solved until I’m back in the now, until she and I are apart.
page 44, from the short story named Madeleine
I had a dream about uranium
I wondered what it smells like
like overripe fruit
like papaya and pomegranates
like peaches and plums
does it smell like life?
I had the thought, for the first time in months, that life without death is a miserable gift.
page 4, Sebastian
The house was immense, and built like a fortress to withstand violent sieges. More than forty darkened windows watched their insignificant carriage pull up to the front, resembling dilated eyes unblinking in silent judgement. Ivy draped the pale limestone bricks, and wild roses tangled up from the soil. The single turret towered over them, parting the mist. To the left were the burned remnants of a crumbling tower, the walls decaying and blackened. Deathgrips, their still-violet petals a contrast to the dull browns of late autumn, grew like a moat surrounding the house, as if to ward away any wolves that might be growling at the edge of the forest.
page 253
Let me burn and burn until the whole empire is devoured, along with all its corruption, its villainy, its rot. Let me burn and burn until this night is not remembered, nor this year, nor this dynasty, until even history is buried in ash. And then maybe green things would grow again.
page 267, Maro