“There are to be no toeholds for love. We are two-legged wombs, that’s all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices.”

“We love each other, that’s true whatever it means, but we aren’t good at it; for some it’s a talent, for others only an addiction.”

“The tulips along the border are redder than ever, opening, no longer wine cups but chalices; thrusting themselves up, to what end? They are, after all, empty. When they are old they turn themselves inside out, explode slowly, the petals thrown like shards.”

“This is what I miss, Cordelia: not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen. Two old women giggling over their tea.”

“As it says in the Bible, For now we through a glass, darkly; but then face to face. If it is face to face, there must be two looking.”

“We ate the birds. We ate them. We wanted their songs to flow up through our throats and burst out of our mouths, and so we ate them. We wanted their feathers to bud from our flesh. We wanted their wings, we wanted to fly as they did, soar freely among the treetops and the clouds, and so we ate them. We speared them, we clubbed them, we tangled their feet in glue, we netted them, we spitted them, we threw them onto hot coals, and all for love, because we loved them. We wanted to be one with them. We wanted to hatch out of clean, smooth, beautiful eggs, as they did, back when we were young and agile and innocent of cause and effect, we did not want the mess of being born, and so we crammed the birds into our gullets, feathers and all, but it was no use, we couldn’t sing, not effortlessly as they do, we can’t fly, not without smoke and metal, and as for the eggs we don’t stand a chance. We’re mired in gravity, we’re earthbound. We’re ankle-deep in blood, and all because we ate the birds, we ate them a long time ago, when we still had the power to say no.”

“That’s what you get for being food.”