If Death is your father, you don't ever have to worry about what part of his body the disease will strike next. If Death is your lover, you don't have to be afraid that he will ever leave you.

Under the ground seep the toxins of the population that lives above. If you have to, you will eat roots and earthworms. It is always night. Candles burn in lanterns made from tin cans. When it is nighttime up above, you can crawl out, but only for a little while. You feel ashamed of your matted hair, your torn clothes, the dirt on your face. Who would want to speak to you? They are all shiny and pretty. They have parents and house with gardens. What do you have? The earth. Whole handfuls of it. The lizard people with their slit eyes and scaly skin. Your loneliness. Your longing.

I'll be inside the one who holds you. And then I won't be.

I dreamed of being a part of the stories—even terrifying one, even horror stories—because at least the girls in stories were alive before they died.

You are so intense. Like a storm. It's shocking how intense you are.

Pain didn't ever really stop, he thought; it just changed forms.

I want to be untouchable and beautiful and completely dead inside.