Depression, suffering and anger are all part of being human.

They dream of men with gentle hands, eloquent with tenderness, fingers that brushed along a cheek, that outlined open lips in the lovers' braille. Hands that sculpted sweetness from sullen flesh, that traced breast and ignited hips, opening, kneading. Flesh becomes bread in the heat of those hands, braided and rising.

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

The phoenix must burn to emerge.

If sinners where so unhappy, why would they prefer their suffering? But now I knew why. Without my wounds, who was I?

The sound of her laughter was sticky as sap, the smell of night-blooming jasmine soft as a milk bath.

This was the life I was going to be living, everybody separated from everybody else, hanging on for a moment only to be washed away.