“The clay is never where your attention should be—to look for it is to fire a shot long after your target has passed your barrel. Rather, you join a dance with it, keeping it just on the periphery of your focus but never fully acknowledging it.”

“What about the time I laid against you like a ragdoll? My head to your chest, legs out, toddler-ish, my spine curved horribly and bent in two places like the doctor said it would be when I got to be all grown up.”

“The sickness, the daughter of her sickness, was inside of me. A creature slithered below the surface, swallowing its own tail, both so hungry and so scared of the bite.”

“The gentle smile had vanished, replaced by a frail, crooked imitation, and teary eyes, the same look from the portrait,”

“[…] she looks like a flower girl Sadie saw last summer at her aunt’s wedding; there is something so sombre about her and about that girl at the wedding too, and she wants to reach out and touch her, she doesn’t know why.”