The Confessions of Frannie Langton

by Sara Collins

A novel is like a long, warm drink but a poem is a spike through the head.

Dying men don’t just dwell on the past: they invent it.

I was a woman who loved a woman, chief among the womanly sins, like barrenness and thinking.

Before it begins to eat your insides, opium is like a flame. It is all energy, and at the same time all rest. It pulls close all the meshwork of your own brain. Joys become raptures. Best of all, it drains the world away.

White doctors are more curse than cure

Hurt sometimes puts a person in a hurting mood, and I spoke harsh words, then, which I bitterly regret.

I didn’t say more, not wishing to bring her spirits down further, for they’d have nowhere to land but on me.