“Tess was sobbing, and each cry was like a razor slicing my skin.”
“A cut. That's what I felt. Words can cut, slice, like a razor.”
“The little shards of sleep that they allowed her turned into razors, slicing at her wits.”
“Tragedy was like that, a razor that sliced through time, severing the now from the before, incising the what-might-have-been from reality as cleanly as any surgeon's blade.”
“His wife was crying, and he felt nothing; only each time she sobbed in this profound, this silent, this hopeless way, he descended another step into the pit.”
“I bite my fingernails till they look like disease, pull strips of my skin away. Get Daddy's razor out cabinet. Cut cut cut arm wrist, not trying to die, trying to plug myself back in. (111)”