I can keep picking small fights, or brave the big one. Time to screw my courage. Or go down trying.

...no way through it but through it," I tell myself.

Obey the muse, Liz said. She's a fickle mistress.

Then I smell the sweat on him, a clean musky scent that I'd bottle and wear as perfume if I could.

But my hand has been clenched into a fist for three years now; it's frozen shut.

I know. So, I was angry with you. I didn't know why. I was angry with the world. I did know why. I hated all my therapists for being useless. I was this little ball of self-destructive fury, and none of them could do anything but tell me that I was a little ball of self-destructive fury. [...] I knew I was angry. Tell me what to do with that anger, please.

It feels like the city is telling secrets down here, privy only to those who think to listen.