13 Quotes by Shilo Niziolek

Afterward, she would finally come to understand what it meant to be human, what it felt like when the wrong man loves a woman, how the touch of a hand on her back--placed at the exact spot where the shoulder blades end and before the spine begins--can feel like the way that wings beat in the darkest part of the night.

She felt time in the lean muscles in her thighs and rounded bottom when she pushed herself off the ground. She felt time in the way her arms and legs pumped when she walked into the river, bathed herself in the cool reflected surface of the dark pool under the waterfall. Josephine felt the possibility of time the night she watched the couple bend, release, break, and come back together on the trunk of the hundred-year-old tree. -The Girl with Dragonfly Wings

But that is the difference between us, I always want more than what the world has to give me. There is a crow outside calling out a lonesome call. Maybe one day I will sprout wings and fly above the land, only to wish that I was a salmon swimming upriver to the sea.

It was in those moments that I became one of them, one of the leavers. I'm leaving and I'm never coming back, I thought. It felt powerful. I finally felt in control. Is this how it felt to all the others. the leavers, the takers, the breakers? I became what they were. I could disappear. -The Art of Leaving

There are people out there who do this. They pick up and they leave. Sometimes they were never really there. Other times they are with you, but in their minds they are a thousand miles away. They are taking a walk down an endless road; they are standing in a field of daisies on some unknown cliff; they are floating through space. -The Art of Leaving

As she watched them move and bend their bodies in the same way the water curved and slid its way around the river rocks she found it hard to breathe. -The Girl with Dragonfly Wings

But, sometimes, especially late at night, when only the wind is awake with my thoughts, I feel an urgent need. I think of lacing up my tennis shoes and stepping out the door, already in a half run. I think of running and running forever, until I become part of the night sky. -The Art of Leaving

The wild abundance of air around her gave her a strange tingling feeling right in the places where shoulder blades end and before spine begins. -The Girl with Dragonfly Wings

He guided me into the house and walked me to the shower. He ran the water and cared for me as if I was an upset toddler or an elderly person who could no longer care for herself. He washed me hair and gently washed my body, while I cried as if the world was ending. For me, it seemed it was. -The Art of Leaving