Jerome was sliding and climbing on top of me and it felt like it had the night before, like a crushing weight. So do boys and men announce their intentions. They cover you like a sarcophagus lid. And call it love.

I saw the movie, he said. I know what it's about. Listen to this. When girls get to be about twelve or so - he leaned toward us - their tits bleed.

She was a large, disordered woman, like a child's drawing that didn't stay within the lines.

It was as if, before she`d met him, her blood had circulated grayly around her body, and now ir was all oxygenated and red. She was petrified of becoming the half-alive person she`d been before.

During a warm winter rain ... the basins of her collarbones collected water.

She'd become an English major for the purest and dullest of reasons: because she loved to read.

A changeableness, too, as if beneath my visible face there was another, having second thoughts.