“I was a fixture, a force, and a fierce advocate of fashion and style,” Talley writes in the memoir’s introduction. He also acknowledges how, for most of his career, he was the only person of color in “the upper echelons of fashion journalism.”

Then the space between us got bigger. The first time I noticed he’d been detaching, I saw an opened tube of toothpaste in the first floor bathroom.

The Cave of the Seven Sleepers is a medieval legend, shared within Christian and Muslim circles.

"I tell a friend there is so much to feel guilty about / then I think about how this is a woman's thought a woman's problem"

"Imagine having to ask / members of another society / to look for the stolen and subsequently lost / bodies of your own relatives."

"I don't write for critics and reviewers, nor do I cater to a wider audience (by which one usually means a white audience). My work is always addressed to a very small audience: Sri Lankan readers reading in English."