'Maybe most of all she loved the wild poppies, which made the green bank scarlet as blood. She liked to pick a bud that was fat and ready to open, green-lipped and hairy. Then with her fingers she would prise the petal-case apart, and extract the red, crumpled silk – slightly damp, she thought – and spread it out in the sunlight. She knew in her heart she should not do this. She was cutting a life short, interrupting a natural unfolding, for the pleasure of satisfied curiosity and the glimpse of the secret, scarlet, creased and frilly flower-flesh. Which wilted almost immediately between finger and thumb. But there were always more, so many more.'
Ragnarok: The End of the Gods
(Page 36)
I don't know how this happens.
How a perfect stranger can describe something from my childhood with such clarity.
How a secret i kept from my green-thumbed mother until only recently can be known without an utterance from myself.
How not only the action but the intention and subsequent feelings can be felt by someone else and printed in a book i may never have read.
I don't know how this happens.
But when it does i can't help but be collapsed by it.
A series of unexpected words can gather you up or shake you apart.
The above did both and now i can't stop thinking about those childhood summers that seemed so much warmer, so much brighter.
It makes me want to sob.
I love literature.
And that too makes me want to sob.
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