“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.”

“I stare at my reflection in the glass, and I see two versions of myself: the twin sister, and the bride. "It was supposed to be better than this," I whisper.”

“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.”

“Everywhere he touches is fire. My whole body is burning up, the two of us becoming twin points of the same bright white flame.”

“True friendship is as rare as twin lotuses on a single stalk.”

“Mattia thought that he and Alice were like that, twin primes, alone and lost, close but not close enough to really touch each other.”

“If your twin was dead, were you still a twin?”