Like I've been sketched by an amateur artist: if you don't look too closely, it's all right, but start focusing and all the smudges and mistakes become really obvious.

It's like a razor blade edging its way through my organs, shredding me, all I can think is: It will kill me, it will kill me, it will kill me. And I don't care.

Funny how certain things stay with you.

It's amazing how close I have been, all this time, to my old life. And yet the distance that divides me from it is vast.

But for now, the future, like the past, means nothing. For now, there is only a homestead built of trash and scraps, at the edge of a broken city, just beyond a towering city dump; and our arrival-hungry, and half-frozen, to a place of food and water and walls that keep out the brutal winds. This, for us, is heaven.

So many things become beautiful when you really look.

I hate skin; I hate bones and bodies. I want to curl up inside of him and be carried there forever.