RXO

Don't worry. Things will work out - just maybe not the way you plan.

It was the only thing that made the pain better - feeling like he was moving, getting further and further away from the ashes of that machine shop.

It wasn't your fault, little hero. Our enemy wakes. It's time to stop running.

You'll find your destiny. Your hard journey will finally make sense.

Most problems look worse than they are, mijo. Nothing is unfixable.

He felt like a broken machine himself - like someone had removed one little part of him, and now he'd never be complete.

He might move, he might talk, he might keep going and do his job. But he'd always be off balance, never calibrated exactly right.

But beauty is about finding the right fit, the most natural fit.

To be perfect, you have to feel perfect about yourself - avoid trying to be something you're not.

Don't fight force with force.

I watched until the last flame was gone, then went back inside.

A pain was gnawing in my chest. I pressed my hands to it, the hollows and hard bones.

I sat before my loom and felt at last like the creature Medea had named me: old and abandoned and alone, spiritless and grey as the rocks themselves.

I had scrubbed myself in the waves with sand till the blood came through... It did nothing.

With every movement I could still feel the prints of his fingers.

The wolves and lions had crept back, shadows in the dark... My flesh seemed to have congealed around me. My skin stretched over it like a dead thing, rubbery and vile.

When there is rot in the walls, there is only one remedy.

Tear down... Tear down and build again.

There were no songs to sing before a court, no tales from the great golden age. Yet somehow in his mouth they did not seem dishourable, but just and inspired and wisely pragmatic.

Do not listen to your enemy. Odysseus had once told me. Look at them. It will tell you everything.

Did he know how much those words cost me?

I do not think he could. It is youth's gift not to feel its debts.

I asked her how she did it once, how she understood the world so clearly.

She told me that it was a matter of keeping very still and showing no emotions, leaving room for others to reveal themselves.

I would not be able to bear it, I thought. I would seize him, hold him to me.

But I only embraced him a final time, pressing hard as if to set him into my skin. Then I watched him take his place among them, stand upon the prow, outlined against the sky.

The light darted silver from the waves. I lifted my hand in blessing and gave my son to the world.

Circe, he says, it will be all right.

It is not the saying of an oracle or a prophet. They are words you might speak to a child... He does not mean it does not hurt. He does not mean that we are not frightened.

Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive.