Elizabeth Smart

No, my advocates, my angels with sadist eyes, this is the beginning of my life, or the end.

returning to Canada through the fall sunshine, I look homeward now and melt, for though I am crowned and anointed with love and have obtained from life all I asked, what am I as I enter my parents’ house but another prodigal daughter?

The very silence, the very avoiding of any intimacy between us, when he, when he was only a word, was able to cause me sleepless nights and shivers of intimation, is the more dangerous.