“Now and again I feel the astonishment of being alive like this, in this body.”

“ConnubialBecause with alarming accuracy she’d been identifying patterns I was unaware of—this tic, that tendency, like the way I've mastered the language of intimacy in order to conceal how I felt— I knew I was in danger of being terribly understood.”

“Bring to me, it said, continual proof / you've been alive.”

“He held her like a new womanand what she feltfelt almost as good as love had,and each of them called it lovebecause precision didn’t matter anymore.”

“I make myself up from everything I am, or could be. For many years I was more desire than fact. When I stop becoming, that’s when I worry.”

“When I stop becoming, that's when I worry.”

“Although I know it's unfair, I reveal myself one mask at a time.”