Violence up close has a smell. Like copper blood and charcoal burning.

I shouldn't have eavesdropped, but sometimes, that's the only way to find out the truth.

The damage was permanent; there would always be scars. But even the angriest scars faded over time until it was difficult to see them written on the skin at all, and the only thing that remained was the memory of how painful it had been.

My mother... she is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her.

It was always easier for me to show love than to say it. The word reminded me of pralines: small, precious, almost unbearable sweet. I would light up in his presence; I felt like a sun in the constellation of his embrace. But trying to put what I felt for him into words diminished it somehow, like pinning a butterfly under glass, or videotaping a comet.

Motherhood is a Sisyphean task. You finish sewing one seam shut, and another rips open. I have come to believe that this life I'm wearing will never really fit.

i'm sure i'm worth a lot more dead than alive