"Be kind to yourself," he says softly in my ear, and I ask him, How is that possible? I rock back and forth on my chair like a baby, craving so many impossible things: justice, forgiveness, redemption. I crave to stop bearing all the wounds of this place on my own narrow body. But I also want to be a person who stays, who goes on feeling anguish where anguish is due. I want to belong somewhere, damn it. To scrub the hundred years' war off this white skin till there's nothing left and I can walk around among my neighbors wearing raw sinew and bone, like they do.
---Leah, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
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2 comments:
that cuts right to the blood and bone of things, doesn't it? wow, mich. wow.
yep. it's definitely one of those books that sticks with you.
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