“To some of us who sat with Mike at lunch every day, Shit Plate felt like a good thing that we were doing, like charity work.”

“I don’t know what the break-in meant to me at the time, but it was like a stray thread, a thread that, once I tugged upon it, unspooled my entire world and snagged open a portal through which I could escape.”

“Hurting someone for their own good is easier than she thought it might be.”

“There he is, laying on his side facing the street with his pants around his ankles, his hiney shining like a pale moon.”

“I’m at a place in my life where anything can seem like a metaphor, where a clingy shower curtain can represent death.”

“He said this as he stumbled around their single-room apartment, kicking at the loosened leg of the bamboo chair, slapping her mother when she tried to take away his bottle. “