“How to explain to the earth that it was more functional as a vegetable patch than a flower garden, just as factories were more functional than schools and boys were more functional as weapons than as humans.”

“Sitting on the divan, she touched a finger to the bullet wound in his chest. It seemed so small, so incapable of creating the exodus of blood which had drenched his clothes and skin as he lay in the hospital, waiting for her to claim him. Death has been instantaneous, they said, as if there were a relief in that. She did not want death to have been instantaneous; she wanted to have at least held his hand as he lay dying and said goodbye to him in terms other than the, ‘Why are you doing again? You’ll find nothing. Stay. Oh all right, go,’ that had been her farewell to him that morning. Stay. Stay. Stay. She should have repeated it like a madwoman, banged her head against the wall in a frenzy, hit him and wept. She should have said it just one more time, just a little more forcefully. She should have taken his dear, sweet head in her hands and kissed his eyes and forehead. Stay.”

“Why didn’t you stay?’ she has whispered against the unyielding stone. Why didn’t you stay? She pressed the berry against her lips. Why didn’t I ask you just one more time to stay.”

“The world won’t get more or less terrible if we’re indoors somewhere with a mug of hot chocolate,’ Kim said. ‘Though it’s possible it will seem slightly less terrible if there are marshmallows in the hot chocolate.”

“Somewhere deep within the marrow of our marrow, we were the same.”

“Don't you know how much I hero-worshiped you when I was a kid? Youwere Marie Curie crossed with Emily Bronte crossed with Joan of Arc tome when I was ten. And when i told you that, you said my culturalreferences were the sign of a colonized mind.”

“My ex calls the ochre winter 'autumn' as we queue to hear dock boys play jazz fugues in velvet dark.— Broken Verses”