“I felt a stack of shelves, and these were filled with plastic bottles and maybe buckets, and one object that felt like the worst thing in the world but which turned out later to be a sandwich.”

“He felt like a bottle that is being slowly filled with warm, dirty warter.”

“Maybe they were. I don't know. Maybe theyweren't. But they felt like the real thing, and the real thing wanted to make money off me.”

“I felt something swell in me then. It wasn't desparate, or triumphant, or any of the things I was used to feeling around men. This was quiet and thrilling, and new. It felt like it might spill out from me, and fill whole rooms. It felt like gladness.”

“Aside from the posters, wherever there was room, there were books. Stacks and stacks of books. Books crammed into mismatched shelves and towers of books up to the ceiling. I liked my books.”

“Sometimes I felt like the mundane details of our lives were the only things tethering me to the world. I could hold onto them - distractions necessitating action. They gave me a sense of purpose. If not for the leaky faucet, the sandwiches, the bills, I might not know what to do with my hands.”