Leslye Walton

Fate. As a child, that word was often my only companion. It whispered to me from dark corners during lonely nights. It was the song of the birds in spring and the call of the wind through bare branches on a cold winter afternoon. Fate. Both my anguish and my solace. My escort and my cage.

The days she was finally brought out of the house would later be remembered as a day when shadows seemed blacker, as if something more lingered in those darkened spaces.

Folks around here like to say we came from the stars. Perhaps it's simpler to think of us not as human but as creatures made of stardust--that if you cut us, not blood but constellations will pour from out wounds.

children betrayed their parents by becoming their own people

Just because love don't look the way you think it should, don't mean you don't have it.

To my mother, I was everything. To my father, nothing at all. To my grandmother, I was a daily reminder of loves long lost.

Love makes us such fools.

Children betrayed their parents by becoming their own people.

She laughed for her wasted, difficult life that never had to be wasted or difficult in the first place.

The first bout of warm spring rain caused normally respectable women to pull off their stockings and run through muddy puddles alongside their children.

But while the thought of being dead seemed appealing, the actual act of dying did not.

Because I'm your mother, that's why.

I suppose even monsters can be afraid of the dark.

The whole world had given up on love anyway and clung instead to its malformed cousins: lust, narcissism, self-interest.

Up here it seems we have only the stars, but even they seem small in the midst of that terrifying night sky...I suppose even monsters can be afraid of the dark.

She is the glorious reincarnation of every woman ever loved.

She didn't see it because when it came to love, she saw what she wanted to see.