“When I can't sleep, I always wrap something around my neck and close my eyes and imagine myself being strangled to death. Then I can fall asleep--it feels like sinking deep underwater”

“Gently, I reach forward and close her eyes with my fingertips, hoping it will make her seem merely asleep. But the stillness of sleep is nothing at all like the stillness of death.”

“But I know I'll never sleep again. I can't close my eyes when I'm next to her. It's like sleeping with a spider.”

“When in the down I sink my head,Sleep, Death's twin-brother, times my breath;Sleep, Death's twin-brother, knows not Death,Nor can I dream of thee as dead:”

“I grit my teeth and wonder if it would matter if I strangled Dash in his sleep. Or poisoned his tea. I wonder what his neck would feel like under my fingers.”

“How can I look so real everyday, when really I'm just a cardboard cut-out image of myself-lamenated in coats of artifical happiness with shiny plastic all around- so quite I should be a mime-I wrap my arms around myself when I go out in the wind because I don't know how to make sure that I won't blow away- and I'm standing with my eyes closed so I won't have to see the ground when I fall...”