Nothing But Blackened Teeth

Every religion is a one-way relationship.

But the interior didn't smell like it'd had people here, not for a long, long time, and smelled instead like such old buildings do: green and damp and dark and hungry, hollow as a stomach that'd forgotten what it was like to eat.

A decade of friendship teaches you a lot of things: the tics that separate I’m sorry and I’m sorry you caught me, that hangdog expression that is really code for when the other person’s expecting you to fix their mess.

After all, isn't that the foremost commandment in the scripture of horror? They who are queer, deviant, tattooed, tongue-pierced or other must always die first

You can’t move forward when someone keeps dragging you back.

Have you ever cannonballed into a cold lake? The shock of an old memory is kind of like that; every neuron singing a bright hosanna: here we are. You forgot about us, but we didn’t forget about you.

It wasn’t charitable but apologies didn’t exonerate the sinner, only compelled graciousness from its recipient.

apologies didn’t exonerate the sinner, only compelled graciousness from its recipient.

This is the problem with horror movies: Everyone knows what's coming next but actions have momentum, every decision an equal and justified reaction. Just because you know you should, doesn't mean that you can, stop.

Compassion, like everything else, can be worn dull by rough use.

He could have been a somebody but all he ever wanted to be was somebody to someone, a husband, a family man, a dream he’d coddled since he was ten.

I didn’t know someone else’s pain could have a texture, a bite, a gelatinousness you could hold in your teeth, but I could almost gnaw on Phillip’s dying.

Okay. Just...tell me what you need, all right? I don't - I don't always know the right things to day. I mean, I'm okay at some things, but -" Like women, I thought. Like being a star, being loved, being hungered for. Phillip excelled at inciting want, particularly the kind that tottered on the border of worship. Small wonder he was so inept at compassion sometimes. Every religion is a one-way relationship.

A long year spent making acquaintances with the demons inside you, each new day a fresh covenant. It does things to you. More specifically, it undoes things inside you. To have to barter for the bravery to go outside, pick up the phone, spend ten minutes assured in the upward trajectory of your recovery: that the appointments are enough, that you can be enough, that one day, this will be enough to make things okay again. All those things change you.

I could see why Lin defaulted to wit where he could. Easier to run your mouth, run from the Sisyphean work that was being emotionally open.

We sagged into ourselves, small talk dispensed like so much recreational Valium.

Media’s all about the gospel of the lone wolf, but the truth is we’re all just sheep.

The dead miss the sun. It's dark down there.

But it is aways my reflection, the eyes smudged of definition, the mouth blotted in shadow so it looks like there’s nothing but blackened teeth.

Phillip kept going, his internal monologue, as always, so loud it couldn't ever make space for collaboration.

...and his kindness had a kind of teeth to it, had subtitles... he said it with so much sympathy too. Too much, in fact, his expression greasy with it.

Every religion is a one-way relationship

you can dress a pig in diamonds but it’ll still drown itself in slop first chance it gets.

It wasn't charitable but apologies didn't exonerate the sinner, only compelled graciousness from its recipient.

the mouth blotted in shadow so it looks like there’s nothing but blackened teeth.

her delivery urgent, her voice abraded, like she’d spent too long screaming in the dark.

My head swam, full of static again, like someone’d tuned the inside of my head to a broadcast decades dead.

The ferns grew knee-high, curled against his calves like vegetal cats.