You can't shape me anymore. I am the uncontrolled element, the random act. I am forward movement in time. You think you can see me? Then tell me, who am I? You don't know.

I imagined my soul taking in these words like silicated water in the Petrified Forest, turning my wood to patterned agate. I liked it when my mother shaped me this way. I thought clay must feel happy in the good potter's hand.

After all the fears, the warnings, after all, a woman's mistakes are different from a girl's. They are written by fire on stone. They are a trait and not an error.

What is real is always worth it.

A fish has no concept of water.

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

I emitted some civetlike female stink, a distinct perfume of sexual wanting, that he had followed to find me here in the dark.