Home > Author > Alaya Dawn Johnson
61 " Mother’s lips are squeezed so tight, it’s a wonder they don’t turn to diamonds. "
― Alaya Dawn Johnson , The Summer Prince
62 " Am I only art to you, June?” No, I think. “Of course,” I say. "
63 " brown eyes look like pieces of colored glass in the red light of sunset. He leans forward. I feel smooth and still, a fly drowning in amber. We stay like that for an endless moment, hung in time like the sun from the sky, waiting and watching each other. "
64 " She cared more than anything. She loved me enough to let me go and I loved her enough to stay. "
65 " I feel his three like a heartbeat. For a moment I am empty. For a moment I am flying and I am flying and Enki is the other me at the end of my arm and the blue of the water above us is the same as the sky below. "
66 " My expression could make one of his sunflowers turn away, but Gil just meets it, eyebrows raised higher than my own. "
67 " Something scrapes the concrete at the far end of the tunnel. I turn to Enki, hoping it’s just another cleaning bot, but his eyebrows have come together in that particular way I know means trouble. He doesn’t bother to speak, just looks at me, and I hear him perfectly: Move your ass. "
68 " I can always tell when Gil’s been with Enki, because he moves like he might start dancing at any moment and he hardly hears a word I say to him. "
69 " He turns away and I’m overwhelmed with an echo, with the sense that the words in my mouth aren’t my own. But of course they are. "
70 " At its easiest, love is a blanket; at its hardest, a black mirror—it isn’t just your flaws that show stark against that high-yellow skin, it’s your ghosts. "
― Alaya Dawn Johnson , Trouble the Saints
71 " I’ve loved you for so long and You’re beautiful, won’t you dance? "
72 " She said nothing tasted as good as the crunch of an acarajé patty, deep-fried in palm oil and dusted with a passing bullet. "
73 " Mrs. Montgomery was sitting on the stoop, playing gin with her sister, Miss Reynolds—who always insisted on being called “Miss” no matter how many gray hairs she pushed under that church hat on Sundays, because she never married, and she wasn’t ever gonna be anyone’s missus. "
74 " I lost my nerves in the song, but now, slipping from the warmth of his chest, his arms, his thighs, I feel I’m losing something else. "
75 " I’m struck again by how strange my life has become these last few months — it’s like all the boys I know are beautiful. "
76 " Some cheers, some boos, many confused murmurs. I barely hear it; my eyes have locked on Enki, and God save me but I love him, I love him, he can never be mine, and I want him more than art. "