"You tried to change didn’t you? Closed your mouth more, tried to be softer, prettier, less volatile, less awake, but even when sleeping you could feel him travelling away from you in his dreams. So what did you want to do, love, split his head open? You can’t make homes out of human beings. Someone should have already told you that and if he wants to leave then let him leave. You are terrifying and strange and beautiful— something not everyone knows how to love."

"Leaving is not enough. You must stay gone. Train your heart like a dog. Change the locks even on the house he’s never visited. You lucky, lucky girl. You have an apartment just your size. A bathtub full of tea. A heart the size of Arizona, but not nearly so arid. Don’t wish away your cracked past, your crooked toes, your problems are papier mache puppets you made or bought because the vendor at the market was so compelling you just had to have them. You had to have him. And you did. And now you pull down the bridge between your houses, you make him call before he visits, you take a lover for granted, you take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are magic. Make the first bottle you consume in this place a relic. Place it on whatever altar you fashion with a knife and five cranberries. Don’t lose too much weight. Stupid girls are always trying to disappear as revenge. And you are not stupid. You loved a man with more hands than a parade of beggars, and here you stand. Heart like a four-poster bed. Heart like a canvas. Heart leaking something so strong they can smell it in the street."

"You either like me or you don’t. It took me Twenty-something years to learn how to love myself, I don’t have that kinda time to convince somebody else."