Mary Ann Rivers Quotes

I would need ... daisy love, you know, pretty love, sweet love that nonetheless was ubiquitous in roadside ditches in the summertime, and instead I would get orchid love. Love that needed misting and replanting and pruning and fertilizing and died anyway.

It's very sad. There are no bike-riding federal contract attorneys in my apartment." If my phone had a cord, I would be twirling it around my finger right now.
"That is sad. Did you look everywhere? Sometimes they hide.

If I were there, Carrie, I would need to feel how soft the skin on the inside of your thighs is, first, how hot it is at that place where your thigh curves into your pussy. I love that place. I would kiss it first, but then lick it, inhale you.

How does he make you feel?"
"Right now? Off balance. A little embarrassed. Worried. Like I don't know myself."
"Yeah. Exactly. Carrie, would you like to know this part of yourself?"
"Huh?"
"The part of yourself that opens herself up to a man based on nothing but a little intuition that there is goodness in him and that he kisses like the world's ending. Do you want to know that part? Because you don't have to. You're right. Your life is a nice one - there are no guarantees, but it's on the right path to stay a nice one. Brian is not on this path.

It's so easy to be consumed by this shamelessness with him. The way he kisses, let alone the way he touches me, is so sharply present that it is impossible to think about anything other than the one single second in front of me. With Brian, maybe all that we have is this single second in front of us.

If I wanted, I could choose to make my life a place that Brian could step into. He didn't have any room to move, but ...

Let's go to that Jamaican place around the corner from you."
"Cluck You Chicken? Are you serious? The health department probably uses that restaurant for training exercises.

No picture necessary. I'd recognize you, see you, anywhere. I could fill my life with you.

Did you know that your mouth, your skin, is so soft? All week, every time I've thought about it, my hands feel like they're buzzing. I love your hair. I love that it's short and so when I put my fingers through it, I can feel your whole nape bust out in goose pimples.

I love you. I couldn't be more of a mess right now, but I can't believe I haven't told you because I have, for so long now, and it's like I don't have anything else to give you, anyway. Not time. Not my full attention. Not the kind of boyfriend you deserve. But my heart, such as it is, you do have that. I am struck by my previous reluctance for regret, as if regret were the worst possible consequence of living.

I look at my snow boots, counting the grommets while I try to name what I'm feeling. This has been a problem lately. It's never been a problem before - I've been happy, and sad, and frustrated.
I've felt angry and sentimental.
I've loved. I've been loved back.
Maintaining long moments of wordless eye contact with the man who is supposed to make me feel okay about going blind, noticing all the exact shades of blue and how I can always tell he's going to smile before he does, pretending I'm not responding to some tension between us?
I'm a little exhausted.

If I'm broken, the break will be clean and easily mended. If he breaks, I'm not sure if there will be enough pieces to approximate. I can afford to go along with what he thinks will protect him. I can have this, and I can give him what he thinks he needs, even if he may deserve better.

And yet, every day, Brian gathers his sister's long hair into a beautiful plait, and just the sound of his voice is enough to calm her when she is uncomfortable and frightened. I think that tells me his real story.

Magic comes from freedom, from openness, from willingness. Play burbles up from the yes that lives in the dark space, the now, the gimme, the yearning urge to be and belong and become.
Our joy lives in the dizzying impulse we all learn to stifle as we grow - the voice of yes that tells us to close our eyes on the swings so we can feel the earth fall away beneath us, to lie in the grass with the sun warming our faces until we're certain that it's spinning, it's really spinning, and we're all spinning with it.
I told Cal that the dark space is light, and it is, but it is also play. To be at play is to release the light.

I don't mind the dark, and because it's Christmas, we've been busy putting lights up everywhere. High, so everyone knows we're okay.

The first book I ever read that made me cry. I was seven and hadn't realized books could do that. Just finish you like that. I was sitting in a beanbag chair in the school library when the book ended, weeping, looking at all the books on the shelves all around me, and I decided then and there that I never wanted to be anywhere else.

My life is cozy, but I'm starting to let myself think I want something wet and aching stabbed through it. I want something substantial. I want to gorge myself. Excess.

I think if you love somebody, and know you want to be with them forever, it doesn't matter how it starts, just so long as it doesn't end.

Oh Carrie," he breathes in my ear, "there are so many places I want to touch you."
"Above the shoulder?"
"No. Though I love your neck, and it's worth exploring more. So if I were there, I would start at your nape right where those small dark curls point into the hollow, where I can feel your goose bumps against my tongue when I bite into you.

I should take his kisses with me and go. But with a seeping, resolute calm, I decide to keep him. I am not losing these Wednesdays, even if I can't have anything else.

The problem is that stepping away from Brian, leaving him standing under that pergola on Wednesday, is no longer enough to leave behind how he made me feel in that hour. I could leave him there, we could part as strangers, but God, I know that I would look for him. He would live in my peripheral vision, a ghost nudging me to turn and look behind me, only to find a spot that is emptier than empty

You were the first thing I had asked for, just for me, in a long, long time.

I will meet you on Wednesdays at noon in Celebration Park. Kissing only. I won't touch you below the shoulders. You can touch me anywhere. No dating, no hookups. I will meet with you for as long as you meet me, so if you miss a Wednesday we part as strangers ...

I have never had a first kiss like this. Is it that he's a stranger? So beautiful? If so, I am ruined for anything but beautiful strangers for the rest of my life. He is so hungry seeming, so explicit with his lips and teeth from every angle he tips my head into. I can feel my heart pounding every place ...

For me, there isn't some miracle cure, this is my life, or my disease will progress and my life will change focus again, and I'll have another new life.
I need C to stay right where he is now because for now, I don't know enough to move from where I am.
My hypothesis is that the light will come back, both outside and inside me.
I'm afraid and angry, but the light is a theory I want to prove.
Until then, I just have to keep the experiment going with as many controls as possible.
One bus, back and forth.
One store.
One man, his words under glass.

He pulls just an inch away, releasing with a sweet suction my bottom lip. "Your mouth is hot and tastes like honey." I show him the tea that I've been holding out of the way. "I see," he twinkles at me and takes the travel mug, helping himself to a long sip.
He leans back in, and I guess what he's doing just in time. His feeding me the hot sip of honeyed tea should be weird, but as usual, he's so committed to the moment that I just enjoy the sweetness, the intimacy.