"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
that cuts right to the blood and bone of things, doesn't it? wow, mich. wow.
ReplyDeleteyep. it's definitely one of those books that sticks with you.
ReplyDelete