Tiffany McDaniel

A Novel

Betty

Donna

"You're my centimeter, inch and foof. The distance between your hands is the distance that measures everything between the sun and the moon. Only a woman can measure such things."

Syrina

My name was spelled with a y rather than an e because dad said a y reminded him of a slingshot and of a snake with its mouth open.

You’ll come across those who are so unforgettable, they’ll leave a rash on your memory as poison ivy does your skin.

The water spots on the ceiling looked like young bruises, yellow and pale and green on the edges.

As for his own name, John was the one his parents bad him. Cinderblock was the name given to him by Breathed he dragged a cinder block everywhere. lt was tied to a ropé with loose end draped across his shoulder. He'd hold the rope end i he bent low and forward like he was struggling to drag the weight of a tanker. I guess you hold on to something for that long, itll weioh on you in more ways than one. He started carrying the cinder block after the woman he had lived with for three decades had up and died from pneumonia. Lose a woman, gain a cinder block. Maybe in the end it was him needing to feel the weight of something more than the weight of his grief. 

It was the end of that August. The warm light devoured the shadows around us as our hair dried and sweat beaded down our foreheads. Late summer in southern Ohio was a beautiful challenge passed from the sun to the child, Can you survive my heat and still love me?

Lorelei Petcu

to be haunted is not always such a terrible thing

ella

"Everything we need to live a life as long as we're allowed has been given to us in nature," he'd say. "That's not to claim if you eat this plant, you will never die, for the plant itself will one day die, and you are no more special than it. All we can do is try to heal the things that can be healed and ease the complaints of the things that cannot be. At the very least, we bring the earth inside us and restore the knowledge that even the smallest leaf has a soul."

"Besides, who needs to be in a church. God's in each tree, and we got plenty of them around."

Betty quotes

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