“You are her mother.Why did you not warn her,hold her like a rotting boatand tell her that men will not love herif she is covered in continents,if her teeth are small colonies,if her stomach is an islandif her thighs are borders?What man wants to lie downand watch the world burnin his bedroom?Your daughter ’s face is a small riot,her hands are a civil war,a refugee camp behind each ear,a body littered with ugly things.But God,doesn’t she wearthe world well?”

“The ego hurts you like this: you become obsessed with the one person who does not love you. blind to the rest who do.”

“At the end of the day, it isn’t where I came from. Maybe home is somewhere I’m going and never have been before.”

“all those nights with the phone warming the side of my face like the sun.”

“Later that night she picked the polish offwith her front teeth until the bed you sharedfor seven years seemed speckled with glitterand blood.”

“[…] but she cannot make him eat, like you.”

“His eyes were the same colour as the sea in a postcard someone sends you when they love you, but not enough to stay.”

“Document the moments you feel most in love with yourself - what you’re wearing, who you’re around, what you’re doing. Recreate and repeat.”

“It's not my responsibility to be beautiful. I'm not alive for that purpose. My existence is not about how desirable you find me.”

“You tried to change didn’t you? Closed your mouth more, tried to be softer, prettier, less volatile, less awake... You can’t make homes out of human beings. Someone should have already told you that.”

“Mother says there are locked rooms inside all women, kitchen of love, bedroom of grief, bathroom of apathy. Sometimes, the men, they come with keys, and sometimes the men, they come with hammers.”