The dull pain of truth weights my soul, pulling it under. I am left hopelessly awake.

Goodbye," I whisper at last, when it no longer matters and there is no one to hear it but the window.

Hey,” the cabbie yelled. “How’s about a tip?” “You bet-ski,” Evie said, heading toward the old Victorian mansion, her long silk scarf trailing behind her. “Don’t kiss strange men in Penn Station.

God doesn't like lesbians," Grandma Huberman hised, throwing the magazine in the trash. Jennifer knew what lesbian meant, and she knew she probably was one. But she couldn't understand why God would hold that against her or against Monica Mathers, who'd never started a war or killed anybody, and whose deadeye three-pointers were straight-up amazing. After all, hadn't God made both of them? But people were like that, she'd noticed. They'd invoke Godly privilege at the weirdest of times and for the most stupid reasons.

Instead, I try to adjust to the dawn, letting the tears fall where they may, because it is morning; it is morning and there is so much to see.

You’ve been assigned an identity since birth. Then you spend the rest of your life walking around in it to see if it really fits. You try on all these different selves and abandon just as many. But really it’s about dismantling all that false armor, getting down to what’s real. -Going Bovine

I feel like I swallowed a Magritte. Like on the inside, I'm made of clouds and floating eyes, green apples, and slowly rising men in bowler hats.