Boys with Sharp Teeth

by Jenni Howell

memento mori

Remember that you will die.

I wish my dreams didn’t have such sharp teeth.

“A mirror isn’t just a window,” she says. “It can be a door, too.”

“Jamie, it’s too early to debate the meaning of life. I haven’t drunk nearly enough.”

There is no eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth if no one can agree on what an eye is, what a tooth is.”

“We are the people we are because of what we want; we want the things we want because someone else told us to, not because of anything intrinsic in the things themselves. Likes and comments, sound bites on a TV screen, clickbait on our phones hesitated on just long enough for an algorithm to notice and send us more, shaping us into its own image.

“If you won’t leave the shadows, at least make the shadows dance.”

“Eye for an eye,” he says. “Tooth for a tooth.”

A girl on a bed in a haunted house full of strangers, and I’ve never looked more alone.

Mirrors are breakable. Too much pressure and they’ll shatter—glass, wood, man, soul—once something whole, now just shards on the floor.

“Dedesco mori.”