“Her mother held a wet cloth to her brow for fifteen months while bees died in the space between the window and screen.”

“Second daughter walks outside where everything smells like a ghost. She leaves without her red cloak, without her father's ax, without breadcrumbs for the path home. She has only her proud virginity that clangs like a bell, her will to escape like an egg slipping free and her curiosity, that strange puss, the part of her brain hat claws toward the dark. In the night, in the black fringe of the forest, she could be anyone. She could be the witch sipping boy-blood, the doctor scraping lichen for his collection, the girl who runs and runs and runs.”

“He gives her a lump of grief that has hardened at the bottom of the canvas pocket at his waist. He gives her a hard lump of grief to use as bait. It rings like a coin in the river.”

“First Daughter throws her wool mitten into the fireplace to see the yellow smoke. She loves things for the colors they burn”

“Beneath the wishbone of her legs, the fox shudders. The moon falls right out of thesky. Fur springs up to cover wounds, its tail traces an “S” on the asphalt.”

“I sang colors to counteract the onset of gray winter. Cadmium yellow, brown madder, cerulean blue, I whispered, invoking pause.”

“He had things he wanted to tell me too; I knew by the way his breath hung in the air before us.”