Maybe her own tears were the poison that made her grow.

Choose to believe in your own myth your own glamour your own spell a young woman who does this (even if she is just pretending) has everything.

He said, You're so tiny, like a doll, you look like you might break. I wanted him to break me. Part of me did.

It was always a relief when she came home to him. Like water or food. Like music or that moment when you cut yourself with a knife and squeeze the skin and no blood oozes out.

She wished she had a little yellow house of her own, with a flower box full of real flowers and herbs – pansies and rosemary – and a sweet lover who would swing dance with her in the evenings and cook pasta and read poetry aloud.

But be careful; sand is already broken but glass breaks. The shoes are for dancing, not running away.

You always fed strays and bent down to talk to the dogs you met on the street, looking straight into their eyes as if they were old friends. (Maybe they are, you said. From another life.) You liked to go to the pound and look at them. You tried to send them messages of comfort. I couldn’t go because I started crying the one time I tried. All those eyes and the barks like sobs.