Razorblade Tears

Folks like to talk about revenge like it’s a righteous thing but it’s just hate in a nicer suit,

When the people you love are gone, it's the things they've touched that keep them alive in your mind

Tears ran from his eyes and stung his cheeks. Tears for his son. Tears for his wife. Tears for the little girl they had to raise. Tears for who they were and what they all had lost. Each drop felt like it was slicing his face open like a razorblade.

I ain't gonna lie and say I get you, because I don't. I can't even pretend I know what it must be like to be... you. But if all this has taught me one thing, it's that it ain't about me and what I get. It's about letting people be who they are. And being who you are shouldn't be a death sentence.

It occurred to Buddy Lee that anything could be a weapon if you were dedicated enough. Even love. Especially love.

Life sends us down some strange roads on our way to our destiny.

You love a person enough and you’ll make excuses for almost anything.

He had the self-assurance of most mediocre men. They told themselves the world was their oyster but never realized their oyster had turned rancid a long time ago

He needed your love then. Not now that he's in the ground

But time was a river made of quicksilver. It slipped through his grasp even as it enveloped him

It didn’t seem fair for a man to morn someone, abundantly, that he had loved, so miserly.

That was the thing about violence. When you went looking for it you definitely were going to find it. It just wouldn't be at a time of your own choosing. It jumped up and splattered your nice new boots before you were really ready

Human beings were wired to get used to just about anything. That didn't make you hard. It made you indoctrinated.

Oh, you get the truck. But you also get pulled over four or five times a month because ain’t no way your Black ass can afford a nice truck like this, right? You get the truck but you get followed around in the jewelry store because you know you probably fitting to rob the place, right? You can get the truck but you gotta deal with white ladies clutching their purses when you walk down the street because Fox News done told them you coming to steal their money and their virtue. You get the truck but then you gotta explain to some trigger-happy cop that no, Mr. Officer, you’re not resisting arrest. You get the truck but then you also get two in the back of the head because you reached for your cell phone,” Ike said. He glanced at Buddy Lee.

Ike thought one of the worst things you could give a man was a clipboard. He’d been at the mercy of men with clipboards. They could keep you out of a gated community or put you on a bus to prison. Give a man a clipboard and watch his true nature come out.

Time makes loyalty thin. People shed it like snakeskin.

His empty hands. Hands that had held his boy when he was barely ten minutes old. The hands that had shown him how to tie his shoes. The hands that had rubbed salve on his chest when he'd had the flu. That had waved goodbye to him in court with shackles tight around his wrists. Rough callused hands that he hid in his pockets when Isiah's husband had offered to shake them.

But time was a river made of quicksilver. It slipped through his grasp even as it enveloped him. Twenty became forty. Winter became spring, and before he knew it he was an old man burying his son and wondering where in the hell that river had taken him.

Most of it is just being respectful of people and accepting them for who they are

This is who I am. I can’t change. I don’t want to, really. But for once I’m gonna put this devil inside me to good use.

A man once told me we can’t change the past but we can decide what happens next.

No, hate. Folks like to talk about revenge like it’s a righteous thing but it’s just hate in a nicer suit,

When the people you love are gone, it’s the things they’ve touched that keep them alive in your mind. A picture, a shirt, a poem, a pair of baby shoes. They become anchors that help you keep their memory from drifting away.

Gerald ain’t the person you told yourself he was. That’s a hard lesson, but it ain’t nothing to be ashamed of, Tangerine. We all learn that lesson or we teach it to somebody.

It’s like that story. The wolf gets to the turnip patch at six in the morning. The rabbit been there and gone,” Ike said. “We the rabbits, in that story, right?” Buddy Lee said. “Yeah, but we gonna eat them like we’re the wolves,” Ike said.

It’s easier to keep your head in the sand than it is to try and see things from somebody else’s point of view. There’s a reason why they say ignorance is bliss,

I go looking I might find them. And if I find them, I’ll kill them,” he said. The words came out plain and without much inflection. She’d known him since he was fifteen and she was thirteen. Mya knew he wasn’t exaggerating. Ike waited for her to say he couldn’t do that. He stood there waiting for her to say let the cops handle it. He waited and waited.

Chopping up your first body is disgusting. Your second is tiresome. When you're doing your fifteenth, it's all muscle memory.

The past few nights had been cool, as the last vestiges of winter refused to cede their kingdom to the spring.

Human beings were wired to get used to just about anything. That didn’t make you hard. It made you indoctrinated.