Cynthia

“There are many ways to take a heart.
And the King of Crows uses all methods; he shies from none.
He’s happy to have it cut out all at once as I, the huntsman, did.
He’s happy to have it taken piece by piece, year by year, like a miser hoarding coins, with punishing silences, biting glances, and love served cold.
Poisonous words do the job, too. They are as sharp as knives and leave their victims hollow.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“One need not be a chamber to be haunted,
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.

Far safer, of a midnight meeting
External ghost,
Than an interior confronting
That whiter host.

Far safer through an Abbey gallop,
The stones achase,
Than, moonless, one's own self encounter
In lonesome place.

Ourself, behind ourself concealed,
Should startle most;
Assassin, hid in our apartment,
Be horror's least.

The prudent carries a revolver,
He bolts the door,
O'erlooking a superior spectre
More near.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

“For all that I could not bear my own silence, I wanted the voices of the world around me to disappear. Solitude was different from loneliness, and it was solitude I was seeking.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“My father once said we are all dealt a hand at birth. A good hand can ultimately lose - just as a poor hand can win - but we must all play the cards fate deals. The choices we face may not be the choices we want, but they are choices nonetheless.”
― Brigid Kemmerer, A Curse So Dark and Lonely