My mother said, "kiss him, darling, it's easy so natural" and I thought to myself, not with lips of stone, dear mother, not with lips of stone

We got quiet. The garden was combing her hair and putting on earrings. The house was full of dancing creatures, not male and female but both, two lovers in one body. The books downstairs were reciting their poetry to each other, rubbing together, whispering through the leather covers. Wine was flowing through the water pipes. You had caught my leaping heart in your hand like a fish.

Love is a dangerous angel.

I wanted to die, then. I wanted to destroy the body I was trapped in, become what she was, no matter what it took. No matter how much mutilation or pain. But he looked away, at me. He pulled my face down and pressed my lips against his like he was almost trying to suffocate us both.

The girl in the mirror wasn't who I wanted to be and her life wasn't the one I wanted to have.

In order to have bliss you have to be able to accept all the parts of the other, all the wildness and the darkness. You have to be able to hold on.

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