“I was almost sixteen. I wanted a boy to love me.”

“Lying about my sexuality is a language I speak fluidly”

“I couldn’t tell her how much I hated God for keeping her alive”

“resist the urge to tell her about his decision to be polygamous”

“Stepped into the after without missing a beat”

“My back was turned. In went the triangular shaped rock”

“a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness”

“Being in a non-monogamous relationship does more”

“she didn’t know it would be so wet. So red”

“What do you mean, I’m not like other Black people?”

“Tell them women are punished for just being women.”

“death still lurked out there, just waiting for me.”

“I think of a woman standing knee-deep in cotton, surrounded…”

“All I tasted was salt.”

“After we’d fucked for a year, toyed with romance, talked us to death”

“Everything I had ever been was a mouth”

“I realized that I was constantly bashing my body”

“The number four goes a little bit beyond what can be rationalized.”

“I was heavily pregnant and he socked me in the arm”

“what it would really be like to literally be the only Black person”