She should think about her own soul, what she was going to do with this funky tattered pond dank item. Dark and stained, a ruined thing.

without my wounds, who was I? My scars were my face, my past was my life.

Beauty was deceptive. I would rather wear my pain, my ugliness. I was torn and stitched. I was a strip mine, and they would just have to look. I hoped I made them sick. I hoped they saw me in their dreams.

This is what happens when you fall in love. You're looking at a natural disaster.

...The men eyed her with the automatic mix of curiosity, lust, and aesthetic judgment they always gave young women, subject to object, the way you'd stare at an animal. She pretended not to notice. To remind them she was a person was too much effort. Objects bore no guilt.

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

Death like a lover, caressing him, promising him peace, running its fingers through his hair, its tongue in his ear. She put her own two fingers in her mouth. Im so sorry. And pulled the trigger