Toxin

“I realize I am about to cry, because it is all entirely true, and the betrayal has opened a wound in me I think could split me in half.
"I'm sorry," says Cora, cowed. Her face is a crumpled flower, and I meet it with guilt.
"Never mind," I say. She wants me to console her, and I would, but I feel spread so thin that there is nothing in me left to give. Who will console me? Who thinks of how I feel?”
― Kat Dunn, Hungerstone

“How strange to feel something so close to mercy, whatever that was, and stranger still that it should be found in here of all places, at the end of a road of ruined houses by a toxic river. That among a pile of salvaged trash, he would come closest to all he ever wanted to be: a consciousness sitting under a lightbulb reading his days away, warm and alone, alone and yet, somehow, still somebody's son.”
― Ocean Vuong, The Emperor of Gladness

“I am a drowning woman clinging to a wreckage, but I will sing so loud as I go down.”
― Kat Dunn, Hungerstone

“What a strange, cruel gift she has given me: to truly know myself, to know pleasure, to know freedom - and to wake and find myself in Hell.”
― Kat Dunn, Hungerstone