“Once upon a time there were two parents, two children, and a brick house with lilies in the yard. The parents died, the lilies wilted. One child disappeared. Then the other.”

“Life is much different from the days when there were lilies in my mother’s garden, and all my secrets fit into a paper cup.”

“There’s this anomaly that happens sometimes with twins. It occurs in the womb when the fetuses are growing too closely to each other. The stronger twin develops normally, while the weaker twin crumples and is encased by the body of the stronger twin, where it becomes a parasite. The result is a single child, plagued by a twin-shaped fossil inside. Like a tumor.In death Rose became Linden’s parasitic twin. They were two separate organisms once, growing steadily beside each other. Two pulses. Two brains. But she has crumpled and died, and still he carries her inside himself. She goes where he goes, feeling nothing, seeing nothing, a shadow behind his ribs.”

“...our parents' death broke his sense of wonder. My left-brained brother, who once had dreams of saving the world, now laughs at anyone who tries.”

“And here we are: two small dying things, as the world ends around us like falling autumn leaves.”

“I think humans have always been desperate. I think it has always been about doing something awful if it might help, when the only other option is death. Maybe that's what being a parent is supposed to feel like.”

“And then I wonder, does my brother think of me this way? We entered this world together, one after the other, beats in a pulse. But I will be first to leave it. That's what I've been promised. When we were children, did he dare to imagine an empty space beside him where I then stood giggling, blowing soap bubbles through my fingers? When I die, will he be sorry that he loved me? Sorry that we were twins? Maybe he already is.”