Angela

“Yes, Halloween excites me. That whole time of year, autumn, I find exhilarating. A passionate season. The others are so bland. In the fall, you see opportunities for change. Real change. Possibilities present themselves. None of the renewal and redemption cliches of spring. No. Something darker and more primal and more important than that.”
― Alice LaPlante

“No sex?" He looked at me in disbelief. "Well if you can't have ze sex, what can you do?"

For the sake of simplicity I took my left arm and lined it up just under my collarbones. "Nothing below here," I said. I took my right arm and lined it up to my knees. "Nothing above here."

"What about your armpit?" he asked. "Can your boyfriend do anything he wants to your armpit?"

I thought about it. Armpits seemed pretty harmless. "Yeah," I said optimistically. "My boyfriend can do anything he wants to my armpit."

"This is good," the Frenchman said. "He can stick his penis in and out of your armpit, and if you grow hair there it is almost like vagine."

Is it too late to change my answer? I wondered, pulling a cardigan over my bare shoulders and covering any hint of an invitation.”
― Elna Baker, The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance: A Memoir

“There is always that dream of escape, but there is no place to escape to, you just run into yourself.”
― Willy Vlautin

“A Thousand Mornings

All night my heart makes its way
however it can over the rough ground
of uncertainties, but only until night
meets and then is overwhelmed by
morning, the light deepening, the
wind easing and just waiting, as I
too wait (and when have I ever been
disappointed?) for redbird to sing”
― Mary Oliver, A Thousand Mornings: Poems