But hey, I'm not exactly sold on the idea that love is, in fact, real. Will it find me one day, overtake me, infiltrate my life like sunlight snakes through the cold of morning? Can love thaw me? will it ever?

My happiest memories have no place in the past; they are those I have yet to create.

I wanted to meet the monster. Why go down if you can go up?

THE BAD THING ABOUT FEAR Is it requires a reaction. Some hide. Some cry. But, like a dog condemned to a walled yard with no hope of escape or affection, some learn to bite.

The Screaming flashed me back to a time when mom and dad were still together if you could call miles apart together.

Girls get screwed. Not that kind of screwed, what I mean is, they're always on the short end of things. The way things work, how guys feel great, but make girls feel cheap for doing exactly what they beg for. The way they get to play you, all the while claiming they love you and making you believe it's true. The way it's okay to gift their heart one day, a backhand the next, to move on to the apricot when the peach blushes and bruises. These things make me believe God's a man after all.

My body Healed quickly. But the wound to my psyche was deep. Wide. First aid, too little, too late, left me hemorrhaging inside, the blood unstaunched by psychological bandage or love's healing magic. Eventually it scabbed over, a thick, ugly welt of memory. I work to conceal it, but no matter how hard I try, once in a while something makes me pick at it until the scarring bleeds. In my arms, Ashante cries, innocence ripped apart by circumstance. Bloodied by inhuman will. Time will prove a tourniquet. But she will always be at risk of infection. (124)