Quotes by Michelle Latiolais

But then again, thats what the Book of Job was about to her, a cautionary tale about wanting there to be a God, wanting there to be someone who could enact what a God could enact, or who could sanction what the Devil would do. You want this, people? You want these kinds of powers? No, you dont, and heres why, and heres why its sheer vanity to want them in any other entity. Look what sort of violence would rain down. Poor Job, sure, poor Job with his hives and his financial losses — though who needs three thousand camels? — and too bad about the kids, forgive me, they were delicious, so sweet and so cold, sure, too bad, but its God whos the miserable bastard here. Look what he got himself up to! No good could come of that type of power; thats what the writer of the Book of Job was saying, and she knew the writer was right.

She wished it were evening now, wished for the great relief of the calendar inking itself out, of day done and night coming, of ice cubes knocking about in a glass beneath the whisky spilling in, that fine brown affirmation of need.

She has been surprised by grief, its constancy, its immediacy, its unrelenting physical pain.

Wandering is better than place sometimes, than home, than destination. Sometimes she can eke out the idea that wandering is possibility, chance, serendipity--he might be there, that place she didnt think to look, hadnt worked hard enough to find....

...she imagines her body curled in the narrow monks bed, knees to chin, her own irrefutable geography, but she sees the blood of her futile heart seeping out over her chest and arms and legs, flooding across the rough wooden floor, down the narrow wooden stairs and out into the old soil of the garden. No roses, no, she does not even ask to make roses, just dissolution; most any night she asks just for that.

For all her cultures attention to the physical, it seemingly has little to salve the creatural anguish of losing someone elses body, their touch, their heat, their oceanic heart...she doesnt want another body, she wants the body she loved, the forceps scar across his cheek that she traced with her hand, his penis, its elegant sweep to the side, the preternaturally soft skin. One wants what one has loved, not the idea of love.