The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish

Rose looks at me anxiously, waiting for me to smile back. I do, but I wish she'd stop handing me a knife to cut her with. It's only a matter of time before I'm not able to resist.

Shame is useless unless it motivates you to do better. Usually it does no such thing. It only sucks up energy.

Mom dragged me with her to every terrible place.

You’re right, I don’t know how to be with you without wanting to take everything, without wanting to kill you and devour you and then bring you back to life, and then write about you and do it all again. Isn’t that love?

Her mother’s suffering was so huge it was like its own person: it needed to be constantly fed and tended to.

i love you, it’s a bell in the fog, the only thing that still exists.

I remember hugging Chronos at night and burrowing my face in his fur, letting his purring replace the static that her words had left in my head.

I did not want to imagine her at all. Because if I allowed her in, I felt like I would lose myself again. It was better to take this rare opportunity that forced her off of me, and leave it that way.

That afternoon was the first time I felt... I don't know how to describe it exactly. My head was in Dad's lap and all the happiness that I'd missed was being compressed into that moment. I looked up at him and I was no longer me. I was Mom, but not as I knew her. This wasn't her forcing her darkness on me, like a bag over my head. No, this was something else. I'd become Mom from many years ago. Dad felt it too, I could tell. Maybe it would have lasted longer if not for Edie, talking and talking, pressing and pressing. She wanted to take me back to the other mother. The one in the mental hospital who needed me brought to her, tied and quartered, like a sacrifice.