“Our eyelashes brushed like they would weave together by themselves, turning us into one wild thing. I say, “I think I missed you before I met you even.”

“You always fed strays and bent down to talk to the dogs you met on the street, looking straight into their eyes as if they were old friends. (Maybe they are, you said. From another life.) You liked to go to the pound and look at them. You tried to send them messages of comfort. I couldn’t go because I started crying the one time I tried. All those eyes and the barks like sobs.”

“Just like any woman,...we weave our stories out of our bodies. Some of us through our chicdren, or our art; some do it just by living. It's all the same.”

“Maybe one night I’ll be asleep and I’ll feel a hand like a dove on my cheekbone and feel her breath cool like peppermints and when I open my eyes my mom will be there like an angle, saying in the softest voice, When you are born it is like a long, long dream. Don’t try to wake up. Just go along until it is over. Don’t be afraid. You may not know it all the time but I am with you. I am with you.”

“You asked me who I thought I was before. I said maybe I was a fish because I love water and you said, you thought a mermaid, maybe.If you were a mermaid, you said, if you were a mermaid, I was the sea.”

“I dreamed of being a part of the stories—even terrifying one, even horror stories—because at least the girls in stories were alive before they died.”

“You are in my blood. I can't help it. We can't be anywhere except together.”