Alice

“From one branch, two azaleas blooming,
Fighting for a piece of the dawn.
The roots lie rotten, the leaves die weeping;
Come night, all the flowers are gone.”
― Shen Tao, The Poet Empress

“I was ashamed at how thrilled I felt. For the first time, instead of cowering from my monster, I was walking at its side. For the first time, when it opened its foul, bloodthirsty jaws, it would not be to bite me but someone else.”
― Shen Tao, The Poet Empress

“All I knew was that life without her was a dark void. She was my best friend. My teammate. My family, even more than my parents, who I’d left behind the day I turned eighteen and saw only once in a blue moon. I wasn’t parentless. Not like Miley. But spending time with her was the thing that brought me to life, made me realize that the kind of love I got at home was halfhearted and finite. Drops of water in a bucket. Miley—and her mom, Jane—loved like the turquoise ocean I’d only seen in postcards. Warm and limitless.”
― Noelle W. Ihli, Gray After Dark

“I am beginning to suspect,' he said, in barely a whisper, 'that you are not afraid enough of me.”
― Shen Tao, The Poet Empress