Liaba Ali

“They are two fish in a pool, circling each other, trapped by the same arrangement of stones. Their rhythms are identical, as they push their silver bodies through the water, in and out, like needles through black cloth. He’s the only one who may see her truly. And she does not know why, not yet, but her eyes are two mirrors, throwing his own reflection back at him.”
― Ava Reid, Lady Macbeth

“Love was not something, I realized, that came to you from outside. I had always thought that love was supposed to come from other people, and somehow, I was failing to catch the crumbs of it, failing to eat them, and I went around belly empty and desperate. I didn’t know that love was supposed to come from within me, and that as long as I loved others, the strength and warmth of that love would fill me, make me strong.”
― Rufi Thorpe, Margo's Got Money Troubles

“Lady Roscille. What they say is true. You are so beautiful the moon itself is shamed from rising.”
― Ava Reid, Lady Macbeth

“You are beautiful,” he whispers. She does not know what compels her to whisper back, “Strange. Unnatural.” “No,” he says. “You have been made to fit a shape that confines you. That does not serve you.”
― Ava Reid, Lady Macbeth