AG

“This is why fairy tales are dangerous: their words sneak into your veins and travel into the chambers of your heart, where they whisper of your exceptionalism. They say: Ah, but remember the boy who walked into the woods and came out a king? Oh, but what of the girl who was kicked and slept in ashes? Remember the man who was only kind and so life bent around the shape of his smile? But we are not exceptional.”
― Roshani Chokshi, The Last Tale of the Flower Bride

“You warned me that knowing your secret would destroy us. At first, it sat in our marriage like a blue- lipped ghost, hardly noticeable until a trick of the light drew it into focus. But you could always tell the days when it gnawed at my thoughts. You tried to comfort me. You stroked my face and curled my fingers to your heart. You said: “If you pry, you’ll destroy our marriage.” But oh, my love, you lied.”
― Roshani Chokshi , The Last Tale of the Flower Bride

“At its heart, a dream is a door. Sometimes there is nothing behind the door, only the stacked faces of strangers. Sometimes the door holds row upon row of indignities plucked and preserved like fruit out of season. And sometimes the door is a piece of yourself that has been exiled and severed for reasons you have been made to forget, and it is only in dream that it dares to show itself.”
― Roshani Chokshi, The Last Tale of the Flower Bride

“All marriages possess their own tongue.It is a lexicon discovered in that space between clipped sentences. Its poetry can be heard in the rustle of blankets as you shift to curl around the other in silent apology. In this way, I spoke to my wife. I let the slow drag of my thumb along her jaw say what I could not”
― Roshani Chokshi , The Last Tale of the Flower Bride