Anna And The Swallow Man Quotes

The practice of lying is concerned with attempting to overlay a thin paper substitute atop the world that exists in order that it seem to suit your purposes. But the Swallow Man didn't need the world to suit him. He could make himself suit whatever world it pleased him to agree existed. ~ Gavriel Savit

Your brother is the most ridiculous, hardheaded, stupid man I know!"
Rose half expected Archer to chastise her. Instead, he took a second glass of champagne from the footman passing with the tray and offered it to her. "And you are surprised by this?"
"Astonishingly, yes." She took a long, unladylike swallow of the crisp, bubbly liquid.
"I'm astounded. Ah, here are two scoundrels you should know to avoid." His grin told her he considered them quite the opposite.
They were good-looking men, one tall and dark, the other almost as tall with brown hair and blue eyes and enough of the Kane countenance that she picked him for Grey's relation instantly. They met Archer enthusiastically, and then turned polite curiosity in her direction.
"Lady Rose Danvers," Archer said jovially. "May I present the Earl of Autley." The dark man bowed over her offered hand. "And my cousin, Mr. Aiden Kane?" The man who looked a bit like Grey smiled and took her hand next.
"It's lovely to meet you, Lady Rose," the earl said smoothly. "I hope you are enjoying your time in London?"
"Oh, yes," she replied. "Lord Archer has been a very entertaining companion."
"I don't doubt it," Aiden said with a grin as he clapped Archer on the shoulder. ~ Kathryn Smith

He took another swallow of beer. "Are things as bad as they seem? Or have I just gotten old like my da, and now everything tastes a little bitter compared to when I was a boy?" Kote wiped at the bar for a long moment, as if reluctant to speak. "I think things are usually bad one way or another," he said. "It might be that only us older folk can see it." Graham began to nod, then frowned. "Except you're not old, are you? I forget that most times." He looked the red-haired man up and down. "I mean, you move around old, and you talk old, but you're not, are you? I'll bet you're half my age." He squinted at the innkeeper. "How old are you, anyway?" The innkeeper gave a tired smile. "Old enough to feel old. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

They got to the classroom she and Jay shared this period, but it wasn't Grady's class. Instead of walking on, Grady paused.
"Violet, can I talk to you for a minute?" His deep voice surprised her again.
"Yeah, okay," Violet agreed, curious about what he might have to say to her.
Jay stopped and waited too, but when Grady didn't say anything, it became clear that he'd meant he wanted to talk to her . . . alone.
Jay suddenly seemed uncomfortable and tried to excuse himself as casually as he could. "I'll see you inside," he finally said to Violet.
She nodded to him as he left.
Violet was a little worried that the bell was going to ring and she'd be tardy again, but her curiosity had kicked up a notch when she realized that Grady didn't want Jay to hear what he had to say, and that far outweighed her concern for late slips.
When they were alone, and Grady didn't start talking right away, Violet prompted him. "What's going on?"
She watched him swallow, and his Adam's apple bobbed up and down along the length of his throat. It was strange to see her old guy friends in this new light. He'd always been a good-looking kid, but now he looked like a man . . . even though he still acted like a boy. He shifted back and forth, and if she had taken the time to think about it, she would have realized that he was nervous.
But she misread his discomfort altogether. She thought that, like her, he was worried about being late. "Do you want to talk afte ~ Kimberly Derting

I'll never turn her away, Clyde. She's my mate. I'll protect her till my dying breath. I'll even swallow my pride and ask a favor as momentous as the one I just asked of a man who has done nothing but try to drive a wedge between her and myself. ~ J.L. Sheppard

At some signal, floodlights around the lip of the crater were switched on, and the bright earthlight was obliterated by a far more brilliant glare. In the lunar vacuum the beams were, of course, completely invisible; they formed overlapping ellipses of blinding white, centered on the monolith. And where they touched it, its ebon surface seemed to swallow them. Pandora's box, thought Floyd, with a sudden sense of foreboding - waiting to be opened by inquisitive Man. And what will he find inside? ~ Arthur C. Clarke

After, Mam,' I say. 'What happens when you pass away?"
I couldn't bear her being a ghost. Couldn't take her sitting in the kitchen, invisible. Couldn't take seeing Pop walk around her without touching her cheek, without bending to kiss her on her neck.
'It's like walking through a door, Jojo.'
'But you won't be no ghost, huh, Mam?' I have to ask even though I know the telling hurts her. Even though I feel like speaking's bringing her leaving closer. Death, a great mouth set to swallow.
'Can't say for sure. But I don't think so. I think that only happens when the dying's bad. Violent. The old folks always told me that when someone dies in a bad way, sometimes it's so awful even God can't bear to watch, and then half your spirit stays behind and wanders, wanting peace the way a thirsty man seeks water.' She frowns: two fishhooks dimpling down. 'That ain't my way.'
'That don't mean I won't be here, Jojo. I'll be on the other side of the door. With everybody else that's gone before. Your uncle Given, my mama and daddy, Pop's mama and daddy.'
'How?'
'Because we don't walk no straight lines. It's all happening at once. All of it. We all here at once. My mama and daddy and they mamas and daddies.' Mam looks to the wall, closes her eyes. 'My son. ~ Jesmyn Ward

He looks at me, puzzled. "What's a romance?"
"A love story." I can feel my face going red again. What is it with this man and the way he affects me? "You know, boy meets girl and they're attracted to each other."
He fixes me with a long stare, then lowers his lashes and bites his lip. I swallow hard. "I'll go and fix lunch. ~ Michelle Abbott

Healthy Choices


Hold still

Keep quiet.

Get a degree
to learn how to talk
saying nothing.

Catch a good man
by being demure.
the one your mother chooses.

Let him climb you
whenever his urge,
amidst headaches
and menstrual aches
and screaming infants.
And when he bids
quick, turn over.

Hold still.

Make your tongue
a slab of cement
a white stone etched
with your name.
Kill your stories with knives
and knitting needles
and Clorox bleach.

Hide in your mysteriousness
by saying nothing.

Starch your thoughts
with ironed shirts.

Tie your anger
with a knot in
your throat
and when he comes
without concern
swallow it.


Hold still.

Keep desire
hopeless as ice
and sleepless nights
and painful as pinched eyelid.

Keep your fingers
from the razor,
keep your longing
to sever
his condescension
safely in your douchbag.

Turn the blade
against yourself.
Don't twitch
as your slashed wrists
stain your bathroom tiles.
Disinfect with Pine Sol.

Hold still.

Keep quiet.

Keep tight your lips,
keep dead your dreams,
keep cold your heart.

Keep quiet.

And he will shout
praises
to your
perfe ~ Janice Mirikitani

As he spoke, the edges of the clay man began shimmering, like air does in intense heat, and the lumpen form gradually became more manlike. "Something's happening!" I cried. I was paralyzed by shock and hope. "Please let it work. Come back, Vincent. You have to come back, I whispered, pleading.
Red clay became olive-toned skin, and the bald head became waves of raven black hair. The face that Jules had carefully sculpted became a real nose and mouth and eyes, closed as if in sleep. But it lay there, still unmoving, until, focusing on the air just above, Bran yelled, "Come, bardia spirit, inhabit this body!" He made one final sweeping gesture, as if pulling the aura downward, and touching his fingers to the body's side.
The eyes flew open and Vincent took a great gulping gasp, as if trying to swallow all of the oxygen in the room.
"Vincent," I said, my heart in my throat.
His eyes flew to mine. He reached toward me, and I took his hand and pressed it to my cheek. His skin was burning hot, like with a fever. I kissed his fingers, and his skin smelled like fire and rain-soaked earth. Like the boy I thought I would never touch again. ~ Amy Plum

The filmmaker wanted me to know what I already knew: I had no power. He saw my need and used it against me. My hatred for him was immediate. Like the first swallow of milk that's already gone off - rot strafing the nostrils, flooding the entire skull. The filmmaker laughed at me, and so did the others, the older man who would later place my hand on his dick while he drove me home. None of this was rare. Things like this happened hundreds of times. Maybe more. The hatred that vibrated beneath the surface of my girl's face - I think Suzanne recognized it. ~ Emma Cline

As you swallow the cow's tongue, think for a moment about how strange and holy that is, to devour the tongue of another. To steal from it all its power to speak, to low at the moon, to call to its calf. To be worthy of such food you must guard your own words carefully, speaking only the wise and clever ones, lest your tongue end up likewise, on the plate of a rich man. ~ Catherynne M Valente

He glanced down at her, keeping his expression carefully impassive. "I hate to leave you." There was a gently mocking edge to his tone. "You need someone to follow you around and keep you safe from mishaps. On the other hand, you also need someone to find a beekeeper."
Realizing he was not going to talk about Leo, Amelia followed his lead. "Will you do that for us? I would consider it a great favor."
"Of course. Although…" His eyes held a wicked glitter. "As I mentioned before, I can't keep doing favors for you with no reward. A man needs incentive."
"If … if you want money, I'll be glad to - "
"God, no." Rohan was laughing now. "I don't want money." Reaching out, he smoothed back her hair, letting the heel of his hand graze the edge of her cheekbone. The brush of his skin was light and erotic, causing her to swallow hard. "Goodbye, Miss Hathaway. I'll see myself out." He flashed a smile at her and advised, "Stay away from the windows."
On the way down the stairs, Rohan passed Merripen, who was ascending at a measured pace.
Merripen's face darkened at the sight of the visitor. "What are you doing here?"
"It seems I'm helping with pest eradication."
"Then you can begin by leaving," Merripen growled.
Rohan only grinned nonchalantly, and continued on his way. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Regard the books,' Sinderman said,
'Are there some I should read? Will you prepare a list for me?' (asked Loken)
'Read them all. Read them again. Swallow the learning and ideas of our predecessors whole, for it can only improve you as a man... ~ Dan Abnett

Once a renowned skirt-chaser, now an exceptionally devoted husband, St. Vincent knew as much about these matters as any man alive. When Cam had asked glumly if a decrease in physical urges was something that naturally occurred as a man approached his thirties, St. Vincent had choked on his drink.
"Good God, no," the viscount had said, coughing slightly as a swallow of brandy seared his throat. They had been in the manager's office of the club, going over account books in the early hours of the morning.
St. Vincent was a handsome man with wheat-colored hair and pale blue eyes. Some claimed he had the most perfect form and features of any man alive. The looks of a saint, the soul of a scoundrel. "If I may ask, what kind of women have you been taking to bed?"
"What do you mean, what kind?" Cam had asked warily.
"Beautiful or plain?"
"Beautiful, I suppose."
"Well, there's your problem," St. Vincent said in a matter-of-fact tone. "Plain women are far more enjoyable. There's no better aphrodisiac than gratitude."
"Yet you married a beautiful woman."
A slow smile had curved St. Vincent's lips. "Wives are a different case altogether. They require a great deal of effort, but the rewards are substantial. I highly recommend wives. Especially one's own."
Cam had stared at his employer with annoyance, reflecting that serious conversation with St. Vincent was often hampered by the viscount's fondness for turning it into an exercise of w ~ Lisa Kleypas

In a world of fog and gray, the youth is a shining being dressed in dark violet, his golden-flecked hair smoothed back from his bronzed temples. He resembles a human, but no man I have ever seen holds himself like a king, like a gleaming statue chiseled from topaz.
I swallow. I am standing before a demon, the most beautiful being I have ever seen, and I can't run. I can only stand in the hushed glade and stare, snowflakes falling in the space between us. ~ Heather Heffner

I splash enough water in Chloe's face to put out a small house fire. I don't want to drown her, just exfoliate her eyeballs with sea salt. When she thinks I'm done, she opens her eyes-and her mouth. Big mistake. The next wave rinses off the hangy ball in the back of her throat and makes it to her lungs before she can swallow. She chokes and coughs and rubs her eyes as if she's been maced.
"Great, Emma! You got my new hair wet!" she sputters. "Happy now?"
"Nope."
"I said I was sorry." She blows her nose in her hand, then sets the snot to sea.
"Gross. And sorry's not good enough."
"Fine. I'll make it up to you. What do you want?"
"Let me hold your head underwater until I feel better," I say. I cross my arms, which is tricky when straddling a surfboard being pitched around in the wake of a passing speedboat. Chloe knows I'm nervous being this far out, but holding on would be a sign of weakness.
"I'll let you do that because I love you. But it won't make you feel better."
"I won't know for sure until I try it." I keep eye contact, sit a little straighter.
"Fine. But you'll still look albino when you let me back up." She rocks the board and makes me grab it for balance.
"Get your snotty hands off the surfboard. And I'm not albino. Just white." I want to cross my arms again, but we almost tipped over that time. Swallowing my pride is a lot easier than swallowing the Gulf of Mexico.
"White than most," she grins. "People would th ~ Anna Banks

I know you adore Father, but he isn't the white knight you imagine him to be. He never was. True, he's charming and loving in his way. But he's selfish. He's a limited man determined to bring about his own end-"
"But-"
Tom grabs both my hands in his and gives them a small squeeze. "Gemma, you can't save him. Why can't you accept that?"
I see my reflection on the surface of the Thames. My face is a watery outline, all blurred edges with nothing settled.
"Because if I let go of that" - I swallow hard, once, twice - "then I have to accept that I am alone."
The ship's horn howls again as it slips out toward sea. Tom's reflection appears beside mine, just as uncertain.
"We're every one of us alone in this world, Gemma." He doesn't say it bitterly. "But you have company, if you want. ~ Libba Bray

In our every cell, furled at the nucleus, there is a ribbon two yards long and just ten atoms wide. Over a hundred million miles of DNA in very human individual, enough to wrap five million times around our world and make the Midgard serpent blush for shame, make even the Ourobouros worm swallow hard in disbelief. This snake-god, nucleotide, twice twisted, scaled in adenine and cytosine, in thymine and in guanine, is a one-man show, will be the actors, props and setting, be the apple and the garden both. The player bides his time, awaits his entrance to a drum-roll of igniting binaries. This is the only dance in town, this anaconda tango, this slow spiral up through time from witless dirt to paramecium, from blind mechanic organism to awareness. There, below the birthing stars, Life sways and improvises. Every poignant gesture drips with slapstick; pathos; an unbearably affecting bravery. To dare this stage, this huge and overwhelming venue. Squinting through the stellar footlights, hoping there's an audience, that there's someone out there, but dancing anyway. But dancing anyway. ~ Alan Moore

He knew he needed to release her, but once he allowed his physical connection to drop away, he was uncertain if he'd ever have a chance to reconnect. Instinctively, he knew Azami was elusive, like water flowing through fingers, or the wind shifting in the trees. He needed a way to seal her to him.
"How does one court a woman in Japan? Do I need your brothers' permission?"
She blinked again. Shocked. A hint of uncertainty crept into her eyes. She frowned, and he bent his head to swallow her protest before she could utter it. Her mouth trembled beneath his, and then she opened to him, like a flower, luring him deeper. Her arms slid around his neck, her body pressing tightly against his. He tightened his fingers in her hair.
He was burning, through and through, from the inside out, a hot melting of bone and tissue. He hadn't known he was lonely or even looking for something. He'd been complete. He loved his life. He was a man with teammates he trusted implicitly. He lived in wild places of beauty he enjoyed. He hadn't considered there would be a woman who could ever fit with him, who would ever turn his insides soft and his body hard.
Feel the same way, Azami. He didn't lift his mouth, kissing her again and again because one he'd made the mistake, he was addicted and what was the use fighting it? Not when it felt so damn right.
Somewhere along the line, his kiss went from sheer aggression and command, to absolute tenderness. The emotion for her rose like ~ Christine Feehan

no disease suffered by a live man can be known, for every living person has his own peculiarities and always has his own peculiar, personal, novel, complicated disease, unknown to medicine -- not a disease of the lungs, liver, skin, heart, nerves, and so on mentioned in medical books, but a disease consisting of one of the innumerable combinations of the maladies of those organs. This simple thought could not occur to the doctors (as it cannot occur to a wizard that he is unable to work his charms) because the business of their lives was to cure, and they received money for it and had spent the best years of their lives on that business. But above all that thought was kept out of their minds by the fact that they saw they were really useful [...] Their usefulness did not depend on making the patient swallow substances for the most part harmful (the harm was scarcely perceptible because they were given in small doses) but they were useful, necessary, and indispensable because they satisfied a mental need of the invalid and those who loved her -- and that is why there are, and always will be, pseudo-healers, wise women, homoeopaths, and allopaths. They satisfied that eternal human need for hope of relief, for sympathy, and that something should be done, which is felt by those who are suffering. ~ Leo Tolstoy

A Bookworm
A moth ate a word. To me that seemed
A curious happening when I heard of that wonder,
That a worm should swallow the word of a man,
A thief in the dark eat a thoughtful discourse
And the strong base it stood on. He stole, but he was not
A whit the wiser when the word had been swallowed. ~ Anonymous

All the things we don't say, all the words we swallow, and it makes nothing but trouble. ~ Anna Quindlen

Before Diagnosis"

The lake is dead for a second time
this January. And no matter
how many geese lay their warm breasts
against the ice or fly across
its hard chest, it doesn't break,
or sink, or open up and swallow them.
The ice is frozen water.
There is no metaphor for exile.
Even if these trees continue to shake
the crows from their branches,
my sister is still farther away from her mind
than we are from each other
sitting on opposite ends of a park bench
waiting for evening to swallow us whole.
In the last moments of a depressive, a sun.
In the last moments of a sun, my sister
says a man is chasing a goose through the snow. ~ Roger Reeves

CHORUS:
You that live in my ancestral Thebes, behold this Oedipus,- him who knew the famous riddles and was a man most masterful; not a citizen who did not look with envy on his lot- see him now and see the breakers of misfortune swallow him!
Look upon that last day always. Count no mortal happy till he has passed the final limit of his life secure from pain. ~ Sophocles

I can't swallow another drop of soda by this point because the carbonation is burning my throat.
"Oh really? Well ... " I trail off as I feel bubbling at the base of my throat. This is not good.
Before I can stop myself, I let out the biggest burp I've ever, ever, ever had. I slap a hand over my mouth and stare at Logan whose eyebrows have reached astronomical heights.
"Dude! So not smooth, man! Girls cannot stand rudeness," Dan yells from the back room. ~ Leah Rae Miller

When that man left her, and then the barber ran off with all the money and the few valuables she had saved up over the years, she didn't swallow caustic soda. She shook herself down as if nothing had happened ~ Magda Szabo

There is not way that you can have a decent life as a man if you aren't awake and aware every moment. Show up for your own life. Don't pass your days in a stupor, content to swallow whatever watery ideas modern society may bottle feed you through the media, satisfied to slumber through life in an instant gratification sugar coma. The most extraordinary gift you've been given is your own humanity, which is about consciousness. So honor that consciousness. ~ Eustace Conway

My mother sings One day at a time sweet Jesus, and even Daddy likes to say that, one day at a time, as if it's some strategy for living. And yet the quickest way to not live at all is to take life one day at a time. It's the way I've discovered to not do a damn thing. If you can break a day down into quarters, then hours, then half hours, then minutes, you can chew down any stretch of time to bite size. It's like dealing with losing a man. If you can bear it for one minute, then you can swallow two, then five, then another five and on and on. If I don't want to think about my life, I don't have to think about life at all, just hold for one minute, then two, then five, then another five, before you know it, a month can pass and you don't even notice because you've only been counting minutes. ~ Marlon James

If there was a religion of Annaism, and I had to tell you how humans made their way to Earth, it would go like this: In the beginning, there was nothing at all but the moon and the sun. And the moon wanted to come out during the day, but there was something so much brighter that seemed to fill up all those hours. The moon grew hungry, thinner and thinner, until she was just a slice of herself, and her tips were as sharp as a knife. By accident, because that is the way most things happen, she poked a hole in the night and out spilled a million stars, like a fountain of tears.

Horrified, the moon tried to swallow them up. And sometimes this worked, because she got fatter and rounder.. But mostly it didn't, because there were just so many. The stars kept coming, until they made the sky so bright that the sun got jealous. He invited the stars to his side of the world, where it was always bright. What he didn't tell them, though, was that in the daytime, they'd never be seen. So the stupid ones leaped from the sky to the ground, and they froze under the weight of their own foolishness.

The moon did her best. She carved each of these blocks of sorrow into a man or a woman. She spent the rest of her time watching out so that her other stars wouldn't fall. She spent the rest of her time holding onto whatever scraps she had left. ~ Jodi Picoult

A moth goes into a podiatrist's office, and the podiatrist's office says, "What seems to be the problem, moth?"

The moth says "What's the problem? Where do I begin, man? I go to work for Gregory Illinivich, and all day long I work. Honestly doc, I don't even know what I'm doing anymore. I don't even know if Gregory Illinivich knows. He only knows that he has power over me, and that seems to bring him happiness. But I don't know, I wake up in a malaise, and I walk here and there… at night I…I sometimes wake up and I turn to some old lady in my bed that's on my arm. A lady that I once loved, doc. I don't know where to turn to. My youngest, Alexendria, she fell in the…in the cold of last year. The cold took her down, as it did many of us. And my other boy, and this is the hardest pill to swallow, doc. My other boy, Gregarro Ivinalititavitch… I no longer love him. As much as it pains me to say, when I look in his eyes, all I see is the same cowardice that I… that I catch when I take a glimpse of my own face in the mirror. If only I wasn't such a coward, then perhaps…perhaps I could bring myself to reach over to that cocked and loaded gun that lays on the bedside behind me and end this hellish facade once and for all…Doc, sometimes I feel like a spider, even though I'm a moth, just barely hanging on to my web with an everlasting fire underneath me. I'm not feeling good. And so the doctor says, "Moth, man, you're troubled. But you should be seeing a psychiatrist. Why on ~ Norm Macdonald

She remembers blood.
A fine mist which goes deep into her lungs, over her skin and through the air. She remembers a desert at dusk. The sky indigo blue and the fire bright, so bright that she can see everything. Near the fire, in the night, all she knows is chaos wrapped in crimson. All is death and nightmare with a single solitary dancer who smiles cruelly as he moves. He is power and darkness. He is man and beast, silver coin eyes and that face, those claws and the agony of loss.
Time stretches wide; seconds like vast eons swallow up her world. Vince is dead, his mother, his brother and her small son ripped apart and gushing as he/it moves. She is screaming, a howl of agony beyond words, primal and wordless. Still he moves, faster than air, faster than she could ever be. Blood drips from her face as she grunts, running with her lungs on fire and her last remaining hope wrapped in her arms. ~ Amanda M. Lyons

Man comes into the world a blind, groping mite. He knows hunger and the fear of noise and of falling. His life is spent in flight - flight from hunger and from the thunderbolt of destiny. From his moment of birth he begins to fall through the whistling air of Time: down, down into a chasm of darkness . . . we come like a breath of wind over the fields of morning. We go like a lamp flame caught by a blast from a darkened window. In between we journey from table to table, from battle to bottle, from bed to bed. We suck, we chew, we swallow, we lick, we try to mash life into us like an am-am-amoeba God damn it! Somebody lets us loose like a toad out of a matchbox and we jump and jump and jump and the guy always behind us, and when he gets tired he stomps us to death and our guts squirt out on each side of the boot of All Merciful Providence. The son-of-a-bitch! ~ William Lindsay Gresham

I will pull on my stockings and go quietly past the bedroom doors, and down through the kitchen, out through the garden past the greenhouse into the field. It is still early morning. The mist is on the marshes. The day is stark and stiff as a linen shroud. But it will soften; it will warm. At this hour, this still early hour, I think I am the field, I am the barn, I am the trees; mine are the flocks of birds, and this young hare who leaps, at the last moment when I step almost on him. Mine is the heron that stretches its vast wings lazily; and the cow that creaks as it pushes one foot before another munching; and the wild, swooping swallow; and the faint red in the sky, and the green when the red fades; the silence and the bell; the call of the man fetching cart-horses from the fields - all are mine. ~ Virginia Woolf

Papa had once told me that as every man grows the layers of mysticism and wonder peel away like an onion until all that's left is the hardened center on which you must swallow or choke. ~ Seth Blackburn

The complete irresponsibility of man for his actions and his nature is the bitterest drop which he who understands must swallow. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

It is better to be a fool than to be dead. It is better to emit a scream in the shape of a theory than to be entirely insensible to the jars and incongruities of life and take everything as it comes in a forlorn stupidity. Some people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the world, like smiling images pushed from behind. For God's sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself! ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Rush-hour on the A rain. A blind man
staggers forth, his cane tapping lightly
own the aisle. He leans against the door,

raises a violin to chin, and says I'm sorry
to bother you, folks. But please. Just listen.
And it kills me, the word sorry. As if something like music

should be forgiven. He nuzzles into the wood like a lover,
inhales, and at the first slow stroke, the crescendo
seeps through our skin like warm water, we

who have nothing but destinations, who dream of light
but descend into the mouths of tunnels, searching.
Beads of sweat fall from his brow, making dark roses

on the instrument. His head swooning to each chord
exhaled through the hollow torso. The woman beside me
has put down her book, closed her eyes, the baby

has stopped crying, the cop has sat down, and I know
this train is too fast for dreaming, that these iron jaws
will always open to swallow a smile already lost.

How insufficient the memory, to fail before death.
how will hear these notes when the train slides
into the yard, the lights turned out, and the song

lingers with breaths rising from empty seats?
I know I am too human to praise what is fading.
But for now, I just want to listen as the train fills

completely with warm water, and we are all
swimming slowly toward the man with Mozart
flowing from his hands ~ Ocean Vuong

Staring down at my wrist, I can't believe what I'm looking at. This adorably sweet and sexy man has just placed a very colorful linked bracelet of the cutest Pac-Man on my wrist. It has a yellow Pac-Man with the blue, red, pink, and orange monsters on it.
"I love it!" I manage as I swallow back my tears of joy. I throw myself around him and say, "Thank you."
He lifts me up and twirls me just once before setting me down. "Happy?"
Smiling up at him, I respond, "More than happy. ~ Kim Karr

He drank a good deal at times. But the alcohol did not seem to affect him. His stony expression never changed. But sometimes a strange, flashing glance from his cold eyes would rest upon Anna, full of some burning fierceness that was like hatred, and he would force her to drink with him, force her to swallow a little glassful of fiery spirit at a single gulp.
'I ought to shoot you, really,' he said to her once, in a dead voice. 'Conscientiously, it would be the best thing for me to do.'
She saw from the grave concentration on his face that his conscience did actually require him to kill her. And this puzzled her because she could not understand why her death should be a conscientious necessity. The thought of being shot did not seem to cause her any concern. ~ Anna Kavan

Because as soon as I leave after having you, I want you again. And then even when I have that, it's not enough. When I see another man look at you the way I do, I want to kill him. I want to swallow you. I want to consume you. I want to possess you. I want you. ~ Nina G. Jones

God was feeling sardonic the day He created the Universe. So it's rather up to at least one man every few centuries to pop up and come just as close to making him swallow his laughter as possible. ~ L. Ron Hubbard

Where's Ben?" she asked after another painful swallow. The angle of the light in the room signaled morning. She'd survived the first horrible night of the illness. That was something for which to be grateful. "He didn't want to go. But your mama kicked him out yesterday." Phoebe bounded to the hearth fire and removed another pot of steaming water she had dangling from a gridiron that belonged to the kitchen. Susanna fought a wave of dizziness and frustration. "But don't you worry none." Phoebe returned to the bedside with the steaming pot, the scent of sassafras and rum drifting under the canopy of her bed. "It's gonna take a pack of wolves to keep that man from coming back to see you. ~ Jody Hedlund

So I get a little tired of having to swallow my lived experience to be force-fed someone else's what-ifs. I get tired of my safety coming second. I get tired of the realities of trans and gender non-conforming people's lives being overshadowed and ignored in favour of a boogey-man that might be lurking in the ladies' room. I get really tired of being mistaken for a monster. I get tired of swallowing all these bathroom stories and smiling politely. But the last thing I can do is allow myself to get angry. Because if I get angry, then I am seen as even more of a threat. Then it's all my fault, isn't it? Because then there is a man in the ladies' room, and for some reason, he's angry. ~ Ivan E. Coyote

I built Rubicon from ashes,' said the other man. 'Ashes of war. I have worked hard to raise myself up from the poverty I was born into. Believe me when I tell you I have seen every kind of injustice, all across the heartland of my mother Africa. And now I have made billions of dollars from land and mining and technology. Now I can do something about it. As Lucy says, I am a very rich man.' He reached up to his neck and pulled out the silver chain between his fingers. 'I see you looking at this. Do you recognize it?'
Marc gave a slow nod. Now it was clear to him, he could see that the odd bit of discoloured metal was actually part of a weapon. It was the trigger from an AK-47 assault rifle. ~ James Swallow

Number 198 was wonderful too. Blake had watched a good-looking and ridiculously pretentious guy hit on Livia. The fancy man dropped expensive name after name as he showed her all his accessories. When he finally pulled out his wallet to show her a "highly desirable luxury credit card" Livia had rolled her eyes in Blake's direction with smile number 198. He'd had to swallow a snicker when he heard her tell the fancy man she was debt free and didn't even have credit cards.
Blake knew that was a lie because he'd seen her pay for tickets with a card at the train station. That made number 198 a secret joke between just the two of them. ~ Debra Anastasia