#mocking

I am Cinna's bird, ignited, flying frantically to escape something inescapable. The feathers of flame that grow from my body. Beating my wings only fans the blaze. I consume myself, but to no end. Finally, my wings begin to falter, I lose height, and gravity pulls me into a foamy sea the color of Finnick's eyes. I float on my back, which continues to burn beneath the water, but the agony quiets to pain. When I am adrift and unable to navigate, that's when they come. The dead. The ones I loved fly as birds in the open sky above me. Soaring, weaving, calling to me to join them. I want so badly to follow them, but the seawater saturates my wings, making it impossible to lift them. The ones I hated have taken to the water, horrible scaled things that tear my salty flesh with needle teeth. Biting again and again. Dragging me beneath the surface. The small white bird tinged in pink dives down, buries her claws in my chest, and tries to keep me afloat. "No, Katniss! No! You can't go!" But the ones I hated are winning, and if she clings to me, she'll be lost as well. "Prim, let go!" And finally she does. ↗

— Suzanne Collins

#book #burn #dead #end #fire

It's better to do a dull thing with style than a dangerous thing without it. ↗

— Charles Bukowski

#style

It's meant to be pretty," whispers Octavia, and I can see the tears threatening to spill over her lashes. Posy considers this and says matter-of-factly, "I think you'd be pretty in any color." The tiniest of smiles forms on Octavia's lips. "Thank you. ↗

— Suzanne Collins

#mockingjay #octavia #posy #fact

When we talk of freedom and opportunity for all nations, the mocking paradoxes in our own society become so clear they can no longer be ignored. ↗

— Wendell Willkie

#become #clear #freedom #ignored #longer

Are you, are you coming to the tree? Wear a necklace of rope, side by side with me. Strange things did happen here. No stranger would let it be if we met up At midnight in the hanging tree. ↗

— Suzanne Collins

#games

Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird. ↗

— Harper Lee

#kill #mockingbird #sin #beauty

All parents should be aware that when they mock or curse gay people, they may be mocking or cursing their own child. ↗

— Anna Quindlen

#child #curse #cursing #gay #may

I think about going to the lake, but I'm so weak that I barely make it to my meeting place with Gale. I sit on the rock where Cressida filmed us, but it's too wide without his body beside me. Several times I close my eyes and count to ten, thinking that when I open them, he will have materialized without a sound as he so often did. I have to remind myself that Gale's in 2 with a fancy job, probably kissing another pair of lips. ↗

— Suzanne Collins

#book #collins #end #everdeen #gale

The way she kissed you in the Quarter Quell…well she never kissed me like that…I should have volunteered to take your place in the first Games. Protected her then…I guess it’s Katniss’ problem. Who to choose…Katniss will pick whoever she thinks she can’t survive without. ↗

— Suzanne Collins

#mockingjay #peeta #the-hunger-games #katniss

This is an apology letter to the both of us for how long it took me to let things go. It was not my intention to make such a production of the emptiness between us playing tuba on the tombstone of a soprano to try and keep some dead singer’s perspective alive. It’s just that I coulda swore you had sung me a love song back there and that you meant it but I guess sometimes people just chew with their mouth open so I ate ear plugs alive with my throat hoping they’d get lodged deep enough inside the empty spots that I wouldn’t have to hear you leaving ↗

— Buddy Wakefield

#hurling-crowbirds-at-mockingbars #poetry #love