"Oleander time.

Lovers who kill each other now will blame it on the wind" "Never apologise, never explain" "Men. No matter how unappealing, each of them imagines he is somehow worthy" "Honey, this is what happens when you fall in love. You're looking at a natural disaster" "The nearest I'd come to feeling anything like God was the plain blue cloudless sky and a certain silence, but how could you pray to that?" "What was the point of such loneliness amount people. At least if you were by yo urself, you had a good reason to be lonely" "Then you ran away, bleeding to die" "I prayed to Jesus the hopeless way people pray who know there is no god" "No point in being brave" "In a perverse way, I was glad for stitches, glad it would show, that there woul d be scars. What was the point in just being hurt on the inside? It should blood y well show." "Beauty was deceptive. I would rather wear my pain, my ugliness. I was torn and stitches, I was a stripmine, and they would have to look. I hoped I made them si ck. I hoped they saw me in their dreams." "Now I looked like what I was, a raw wound" "I wanted to think of something clever, something cool and sarcastic. I wanted t o hurt her. She'd let me down, she'd abandoned me. She didn't think twice. " "Poets in prison - the sheer paradox" "I would be afraid to be so vulnerable. I'd spent the last 3 years trying to bui ld up some kind of a skin, so I wouldn t drip with blood everytime I brushed up ag ainst something. She was naked, she peeled herself daily" "I didn't know what to say. It was like watching someone you loved step on a lan dmine, all the parts flying around. You didn't know what to do with the pieces." "Despair wasn't a guest, you didn't play its favourite music, find it a comforta ble chair. Despair was the enemy" "It was a play and I knew how it ended, I didn't want to audition for any of the roles. It was no game, no casual thrill. It was a three-bullet Russian roulette ." "That was the thing about words, they were clear and specific - but when you tal ked about feelings, words were too stiff, they were this and not that, they coul dn't include all the meanings. In defining, they always left something out." ? Isn t it funny. I m enjoying my hatred so much more than I ever enjoyed love. Love is temperamental. Tiring. It makes demands. Love uses you. Changes its mind. But hatred, now. That s something you can use. Sculpt. Wield. It s hard or soft, howeve r you need it. Love humiliates you, but hatred cradles you. It s so soothing. ? I was bad, I had done bad things, I had hurt people, and the worst of it was, I

didn t want to stop. ? Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you al lows your soul to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find p eople that will understand you, someone to fill that space. - White Oleander "The mistrust of heights is the mistrust of self; you don't know whether you're going to jump." - White Oleander Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft de cay. I know what you are learning to endure. There is nothing to be done. Make sure nothing is wasted. Take notes. Remember it all, every insult, every tear. Ta ttoo it on the inside of your mind. In life, knowledge of poisons is essential. I've told you, nobody becomes an artist unless they have to. The me that died with her "are you gay?" I shrugged. Maybe that would be better. I didn't know. People just wanted to be loved. That was the thing about words, they were clear and specific - chair, eye , stone - but when you talked about feelings, words were too stiff. Fluid with lies Just because a poet said something didn't mean it was true, only that it sounded good. Imagination uses what it needs and discards the rest. Don t cherish anything. Burn it.

- Monsters of meaninglessness