3 books
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2 voters
Rifqa
by
I have chosen you, my homeland, in love and in obedience in secret and in public.
“was strange, learning the contours of another’s loneliness. You could never know it all at once; like stepping inside a dark cave, you felt along the walls, bumped into jagged edges.”
― The Mothers
― The Mothers
“Oh, any of us could’ve told her to stay away from him. She wouldn’t have listened, of course. What did the church mothers know anyway? Not how Luke held her hand while they slept or played with her hair when they cuddled or how after she’d told him about the pregnancy test, he cradled her bare feet in his lap. A man who laced his fingers through yours all night and held your feet when you were sad had to love you, at least a little bit. Besides, what did a bunch of old ladies know? We would’ve told her that all together, we got centuries on her. If we laid all our lives toes to heel, we were born before the Depression, the Civil War, even America itself. In all that living, we have known men. Oh girl, we have known littlebit love. That littlebit of honey left in an empty jar that traps the sweetness in your mouth long enough to mask your hunger. We have run tongues over teeth to savor that last littlebit as long as we could, and in all our living, nothing has starved us more.”
― The Mothers
― The Mothers
“You wouldn’t want a son?” “Too dangerous,” he said. “Black boys are target practice. At least black girls got a chance.”
― The Mothers
― The Mothers
“That’s what happens when you get old. Every part of you drops, as if the body is moving closer to where it’s from and where it’ll return.”
― The Mothers
― The Mothers
“You didn’t know how desperate you could be until you were.”
― The Mothers
― The Mothers
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