One summer when I was about nine, I was so bored that I tried to curl my waist-long hair on a comb, because I thought there was no difference between that and a round brush. I wrapped my hair around it so tightly that it became a tangled nest, and the skin on my forehead was b...
potato-white scalp; the black police boots; the sweat patches under the arms of his short-sleeved police-issue shirt. He was checking the doors, looking for a number seven; lucky for some but definitely not for this boy. He located the door, which had been left unlocked and disappeared ...
The black bruises and bloody wounds are letters and words of his passion, written on his skin. The flesh-book analogy was restated by the 14th-century mystic and hermit Richard Rolle (1300–1349): "sweet Jesus, thy body is like a book written with red ink; so is thy body all written...