she’s not as pretty as you,” I said “But she’s a simpler girl,” my mother whispered.

The phoenix must burn to emerge.

Whenever she turned her steep focus to me, I felt the warmth that flowers must feel when they bloom through the snow, under the first concentrated rays of the sun.

Don't hoard the past. Don't cherish anything. Burn it. The artist is the phoenix who burns to emerge.

Girls were born knowing how destructive the truth could be. They learned to hold it in, tamp it down, like gunpowder in an old fashioned gun. Then it exploded in your face on a November day in the rain.

Whenever she thought she could not feel more alone, the universe peeled back another layer of darkness.

I took my mother's knife and played johnny johnny johnny on the playhouse floor. I was drunk, stabbed myself every few throws. I held my hand up and there was satisfaction at seeing my blood, the way there was when I saw the red gouges onmy face that people stared at and turned away. They were thinking I was beautiful, but they were wrong, now they could see how ugly and mutilated I was.