Jaden

“It occurred to me then that to be a child is to know the cradle rocks both toward the parent and away from them. That is the ebb and flow of life, swinging toward and away from one another, perhaps so we build up the strength for that one moment we will be rocked so far away, the person we love the most is gone by the time we return.”
― Tiffany McDaniel, Betty

“Like the night before, I found her naked and sitting on the edge of her bed. Unaware I was there, she continued to massage her legs, their blue-green veins twisting beneath her skin. I wasn't as afraid seeing her body this second night. In the folds and creases, I saw her history. Her skin was the diary of her soul. All the springs she had watched the flowers bloom. The summers she had stood before the moon and kissed its face. The autumns she had grown wiser. The winters that had frozen the initials of her name. Each wrinkle was a record of this and of every hour, minute, and second she had lived. All her secrets were written in her skin. The things she had asked God for. The things she had cursed the devil about. In such age before me, I saw only beauty.”
― Tiffany McDaniel, Betty

“Sometimes I think the universe is just a glow. The glow of a cigarette in the dark. All the stars, the planets, the galaxies, the infinite edges. It's all in the small glowin' tip of a cigarette in the hand of a man leanin' back against a wall, watchin' a girl walk by on her way home, knowin' she'll never get there.”
― Tiffany McDaniel, Betty