Gina Marinello-Sweeney

“Or, maybe what really mattered was that game of Crazy 8s.”

“I stared back at her, my eyes leveled with hers in inscrutable certainty. For a moment, our eyes remained engaged, unflinching and impenetrable, as the shrill, steady call of a siren ran across the street outside, mixing with the effervescent glow of traffic lights and a steady pitter-patter of pedestrian feet sauntering across the street in wakeful gait.”

“Two years could change so much under the facade of changing nothing at all.”

“The college bookstore was a splash of life, culture, and society. As a psychology student, I often found myself intrigued by the behavior, ways of thinking and feeling, and general schemata of others, and this was the perfect spot to engage my senses.Other times, I was just annoyed.”

“Knowledge can be powerful. But it can only be beautiful if there is more to it. If it is guided by something greater than the simple desire to enhance the potency of the mind.”

“And the shower of roses spun around me, inviting me to take part in their ever-present waltz.”

“. . . for a moment, perhaps an hour, they would wait, wait for something, and when that waiting was over, it was simply dismissed, goodbyes stated, reading materials closed, a momentary pause in the day that did not hold up to whatever came next.Waiting was often a resented gift, imparted to those who accepted it grudgingly in the hopes that something better would come along when the gift was tossed aside, boxed away for the next recipient.”

“You were...are...what I heard. Every note.”

“St. Catherine of Siena once said, ‘If you are what you should be, you will set the whole world ablaze.’ But,” I turned to him urgently, “how can I even light a single candle if someone blocks off the first step?”

“I told my imagination to discontinue communication with my thoughts.”

“That,” Adriana said, “is a puzzling mystery that must be solved.”

“Yes, it is,” I whispered, “and one day the spell will not cause you to forget it.”

“The Eternal Smiler strode forth, handing her one, as well. I considered the psychology behind her smile and formed the conclusion that, despite its obvious coating of pleasantry, it was an understandable psychological decision.”

“There is a host of angels surrounding you, Rebecca. Not figuratively. Literally. With wings spread far to encompass you, protect you with their Light. Remember that they are with you—see them with your heart and soul—whenever you are forced to engage in battle with forces that seek and have become, through their own will, evil.”

“The last time I checked, I wasn’t the one who tripped over a glass container of sugar that I had myself dropped... after, of course, having received several bruises from an attempt to retrieve a flip-flop that had somehow ended up in the sink.”

“Like dandelions they flew across the expanse Of desert calm without advance They filtered through the stilled “become” Returning to the land they knew. They knew no more than where they flew. And so they gathered, one and all, And scattered it throughout their path. Only golden-shafted majesty could still their might. And so they flew onward, without a path.”

“He had not been tossed aside by time, but lost in it.”

“It was a gaze that held the comfort of familiarity. There was no mystery, no enigmatic depth, but unrestrained length, the length of years—the laughter of childhood games and Christmas carols of home— lining its pathways with simple, yet easily overlooked, understanding.”

“The luminescent flow of a sunbathed garden— illuminating the shifting colors of its inhabitants— echoed in my memory as I opened the antique bookstore door in the shaft of window light. The books, like the flowers of the garden, awaited me with the thrill of a new mystery.”

“A poem must be authentic. It could be flowery, it could have the most brilliant metaphor, it could be bursting with onomatopoeia and alliteration, assonance and consonance, hyperbole and paradox, from every end, it could have daring syntax and clever cacophony, it could have a neat and ordered rhyme scheme...but, if it loses its authenticity, its ability to convey the very heart and soul of the poet, then all the euphony and cacophony in the world cannot make up for the loss of its identity as a poem. And that is the true cacophony.”