Sublime

had that sensation again, that there had grown a lantern or a beacon inside me. I was sure that when she stepped upon the stage it would be like putting a match to the wick, and I would flare up, golden and incandescent but somehow painfully and shamefully bright; and my family and my beau would shrink away from me, appalled.

Life will not answer to reason. And meaning is too young a thing to have much power over it. All the drama of the world is gathering underground—massed symphonic choruses that Patricia means to hear before she dies.

Julia wondered if all four girls’ voices lived inside their mother.

verdant,

the old woman’s injunction to “be proper” kills off any opportunity to expand.

succubus,

mothers mourned past versions of their children.

mbeles