Renee Branum

“Drinking together felt right because it meant that, regardless of what that day or week had been like, we were, at that moment, sharing in the same grief or joy. But I knew there was a lot of drinking that Nick did on his own- or with people I never met. Men he slept with, tourists he met in bars or bookshops. And I felt an odd jealousy, not that he spent his nights elsewhere, but that the booze wasn’t something special or sacred to us, that it took on different patterns for him, granted different permissions.”
― Renee Branum, Defenestrate

“Our speech is so full of falling. It follows us around all day long. We fall down laughing, fall apart, fall away. We fall prey to things. Things fall by the wayside. We fall behind, fall flat on our faces, fall back on things. We fall in line, fall from grace, fall in step, fall in love, fall on our swords. We fall out with our friends. We fall afoul of the law. Our words fall on deaf ears. We fall down dead. We say, "Let matters fall as they may." We say, "Things fall apart.”
― Renee Branum, Defenestrate