The narrator blames the birds. And you want to blame the birds as well. I blamed the birds for a long time. But in this story everyone is hungry, even the birds. And at this point in the story so many things have gone wrong, so many bad decisions made, that it’s a wonder anyone would want to continue reading.

If you love me, Henry, you don’t love me in a way I understand.

Hello, darling. Sorry about that. Sorry about the bony elbows, sorry we lived here, sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwell and how I ruined everything by saying it out loud. Especially that, but I should have known. You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together to make a creature that will do what I say or love me back.

This is where the evening splits in half, Henry, love or death. Grab an end, pull hard, and make a wish.

The entire history of human desire takes about seventy minutes to tell. Unfortunately, we don’t have that kind of time.

I am singing now while Rome burns.

Someone is digging your grave right now.