Even the human race can't claim to be natural anymore. We are fake, dying things. How fitting that I would end up in this sham of a marriage.

I watch the ashes swim around like dandelion puffs, making swirls where bodies and walls once stood.

They never exhale, the trees; on a very windy day, they rustle and inhale, and then the leaves and the branches all tremble as though something means to strangle the life from them. The sky watches on. The world is filled with anticipation, as if to wonder if this day will be a great day, or a horrible day, or the last day.

We were his disposable things. Brought to him like cattle. Stripped of what made us sisters or daughters or children. There was nothing that he could take from us—our genes, our bones, our wombs—that would ever satisfy him. There was no other way that we would be free.

I see an ocean that’s spilled out of a wineglass, its body clear and sparkling and folding over itself. I see a ribbon of sand.

Once upon a time there were two parents, two children, and a brick house with lilies in the yard. The parents died, the lilies wilted. One child disappeared. Then the other." Pg 225

He says one word, nodding into the daylight. "Look." It's an astounding word. It's a gift.