and I get refill number three or four and the wine is making my bones loose and it's giving my hair a red sheen and my breasts are blooming and my eyes feel sultry and wise and the dress is water.

You can ruin anything if you focus at it.

You try, you seem totally nuts, you go underground.

Many kids, it seemed, would find out that their parents were flawed, messed-up people later in life, and I didn't appreciate getting to know it all so strong and early.

I watched as she added a question mark at the end. Arc, line, space, dot.

I felt the crumpled paper that had taken the place of my lungs expand as if released from a fist.

I peeled the skin off a grape in slippery little triangles, and I understood then that I would be undressing every item of food I could because my clothes would be staying on.