“If you love me, Henry, you don’t love me in a way I understand.”

“You wanted happiness, I can’t blame you for that, and maybe a mouth sounds idiotic when it blathers on about joy but tell me you love this, tell me you’re not miserable.”

“Tell me we're dead and I'll love you even more.”

“The way you slam your body into mine reminds me I’m alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling, and they’re only a few steps behind you, finding the flaw, the poor weld, the place where we weren’t stitched up quite right, the place they could almost slip right into through if the skin wasn’t trying to keep them out, to keep them here, on the other side of the theater where the curtain keeps rising. I crawled out the window and ran into the woods. I had to make up all the words myself. The way they taste, the way they sound in the air. I passed through the narrow gate, stumbled in, stumbled around for a while, and stumbled back out. I made this place for you. A place for to love me. If this isn’t a kingdom then I don’t know what is.”

“You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together to make a creature that will do what I say or love me back.”

“There’s smashed glass glittering everywhere like stars. It’s a Western,Henry. It’s a downright shoot-em-up. We’ve made a graveyardout of the bone white afternoon.It’s another wrong-man-dies scenario, and we keep doing it Henry,keep saying until we get it right … but we always win and we never quit.See, we’ve won again,here we are at the place where I get to beg for it, where I get to say Please,for just one night, will you lie down next to me, we can leave our clothes on,we can stay all buttoned up …But we both know how it goes—I say I want you inside me and you holdmy head underwater. I say I want you inside me and you split me openwith a knife.”

“This is where the evening splits in half, Henry, love or death. Grab an end, pull hard, and make a wish.”