“I would wear pink because I knew my future was anything but rosy. I would accessorize myself to the hilt, and I would wear flirty shoes because my world needed more beauty to counter all the ugliness in it. I would wear pink because I hated gray, I didn’t deserve white, and I was sick of black.”

“Beauty was deceptive. I would rather wear my pain, my ugliness. I was torn and stitched. I was a strip mine, and they would just have to look. I hoped I made them sick. I hoped they saw me in their dreams.”

“Reece would be back. I knew it like I knew my name. There would be a time and place to deal with him. But that was the future. I needed to keep my focus on the now. Because at the end of the day right now was all I had.”

“I wear dresses most of the time.If I wore a skirt or pants my panties would show because of all the people pulling at my hem wanting something from me.”

“I’m as bouge as the next person. My mother was a waitress and my father was a bartender. People think I went to Yale and shit, because I have a vocabulary and I wear a suit. I wear a suit because I aspire to wear a fuckin’ suit. I didn’t work my whole fuckin’ life to wear a Hello Kitty fuckin’ wifebeater up here.”

“If I did not wear torn pants, orthopedic shoes, frantic disheveled hair, that is to say, if I did not tone down my beauty, people would go mad. Married men would run amuck.”