‘I want to reach under and wrestle the agony out of my being or crawl out of my own wretched skin but sane people don’t dig and claw at their own flesh.’

‘It was her favorite color, and she loved the smoothness of the fabric on her skin.’

‘I imagine the moment Uncle Fi got sick. Who the guy was. Where they met. What they did.’

‘Over the next few years, a series of massive rocks proposition me for a role as my moon.’

‘I craved the abandoned houses, the stillness of the woods.’

‘In the water, my body isn't ambivalent, ambiguous, complicated—it's easy to read in its queerness.’

‘Ever since the dog, Brodie, got hit by that Hermes van, Katy had been like this.’

‘She played the part of the gamine, maybe too much so. Imitating a man caused trouble.’

‘It was like embodiment had simply flaked off her, like dry skin at the end of a long winter.’

‘In the center of the table, a pink Phalaenopsis.’

‘The elephant barely flinched as the spear stuck with a wobble into its right rear leg. No blood, no change. They all just kept floating downward.’