Who are you? the band sang. I tried to remember but I really couldn't say.

Love could never bloom in a concrete block room.

A couple of times, I could have turned a trick. But I didn't want to start. I knew how it would play. When you started thinking it was easy, you were forgetting what it cost.

Once you get below the floor of our personal identities, we're all connected. Perhaps that's why we can move into others' lives.

The word rattled in my head like rocks in an oatmeal box.

They wanted the real mother, the blood mother, the great womb, mother of fierce compassion, a woman large enough to hold all the pain, to carry it away. What we needed was someone who bled...mother's big enough, wide enough for us to hide in...mother's who would breathe for us when we could not breathe anymore, who would fight for us, who would kill for us, die for us.

Panic was the worst thing. When you panicked, you couldn't see possibilities. Then came despair.