“I want to be healed and whole and perfect again, like a misshapen slab of iron that comes out of the fire glowing, glittering, razor-sharp.”

“What does it feel like to be infected?""I-- I can't describe it." I force the words out. Can't breathe, can't breathe, can't breathe. His skin smells like smoke from a wood fire, like soap, like heaven. I imagine tasting his skin; I imagine biting his lips. "I want to know." His words are a whisper, barely audible. "I want to know with you.”

“This is a monster-story, and he has come back to me a terror-creation, patched together, broken and hateful, and I will wake up and he will be here, and whole and mine again.”

“It's like a razor blade edging its way through my organs, shredding me, all I can think is: It will kill me, it will kill me, it will kill me. And I don't care.”

“i feel like a curtain has dropped away and i'm seeing people for who they really are, different, and sharp, and unknowable.”

“He cut the insides of my eyelids with razors.”

“There are so many things I want to tell her, so many things she doesn't know; like how I remember when she first came home from the hospital, a big pink blob with a perma-smile, and she used to fall asleep while grabbing on to my pinter finger; how I sued to give her piggyback rides up and down the beach on Cape Cod, and she would tub on my ponytail to direct me one way or the other; how soft and furry her head was when she was first born; that the first time you kiss someone you'll be nervous, and it will be weird, and it won't be as good as you want it to be, and that's okay; how you should only fall in love with people who will fall in love back... I feel an ache in my throat, but i manage to smile. Two conflicting desires go through me at the same time, each as sharp as a razor blade: I want to see you grow up and Don't ever change.”