“On the third Wednesday of every month I'd visit fat Dr. Pinski, an old demoralized psychiatrist who couldn't have spotted a suicide if the malcontent's errant bullet ricocheted off his desk and grazed him with a flesh wound. And chances are it would be a flesh wound, cuz he was packing. Flesh. Lots of it too.”

“It's just a flesh wound!”

“I'd wear any of my private attire for the world to see. But I would rather have an open flesh wound than ever wear a band aid in public.”

“You carve wounds upon my flesh and write there in salt!”

“You knew what I was," he said, taking his hair back from his face, eyes wild with the will to make me believe. "You knew that my face is a lie, just pretending to be human. And you still wanted me, you could touch me, you could see what I am, the only one who knew and wanted me all the same, and you said I wasn't a --" his chest hitched. "Not a monster. I was going to tell you, and then I thought, well, I'm probably going to die in the underworld, so why can't I have this until then? I'm the stupid one; not you. I'm so sorry.”

“This love is more than just a flesh wound,it is wreckage we choose not to crawl from.”

“We are united to Christ who is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, and participate in the risen Humanity of Christ so that we are bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh.”