Who wants to recover? It took me years to get that tiny. I wasn't sick; I was strong.

Memory cuts both ways; it can either provide you with tremendous strength and a foundation to carry you through your life, or it can be a demon that just ruins your present and your future because you can’t let go of the past.

The bathroom door swings open. Emma sees the blood painting my skin and the red rivers carved on my body. Emma sees the wet knife, silver and bone. The screams of my little sister shatter mirrors.

I just want to sleep. A coma would be nice. Or amnesia. Anything, just to get rid of this, these thoughts, whispers in my mind. Did he rape my head, too?

Do they choose to be so dense? Were they born that way? I have no friends. I have nothing. I say nothing. I am nothing.

Momma said that ghosts couldn't move over water. That's why Africans got trapped in the Americas.. They kept moving us over the water, stealing us away from our ghosts and ancestors, who cried salty rivers into the sand. That's where Momma was now, wailing at the water's edge, while her girls were pulled out of sight under white sails that cracked in the wind.

The light beyond my eyes flashflashflashes with a hundred futures for me. Doctor. Ship's captain. Forest ranger. Librarian. Beloved of that man or that women or those children or those people who voted for me or who painted my picture. Poet. Acrobat. Engineer. Friend. Guardian. Avenging whirlwind. A million futures--not all pretty, not all long, but all of them mine. I do have a choice" - p. 271