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I could not return to the body that contained only the literal world.

Where *sparrow* does not suggest *sorrow*.

Where *sorrow* does not suggest *sorry*.

("Sparrow")

[I often find myself a little scared of this speaker, how everyone around her is an object, how her wordplay seems to consume emotion and awareness of the world outside her as real, but this ending reverses some of that for me.]

Do not compare the long rains of my regret with the flash flood of your grief -- I imagine saying.

It was neither insects nor sand, but an odd devotion to devotion.

[why are these numbered stanzas out of order? some blank with just a title? fits a general aesthetic of fragmentary disorder, but this doesn't feel quite so zuihitsu-y: it's more specific, more ekphrastic.]

In the tidal pool a half dozen hermit crabs scuffle over an empty shell which the largest wins but cannot fit into. *That.*

If I can at least take care of a part of her perhaps she will learn to see herself as more than a point of departure.

Looking for sensation on some meridian. In some station. Now speeding away from an acquaintance I might have asked, _shall I slip off my dress?_ But I didn't. There was no urgency.

"Beauty emergency" is cute.

I think I would have unfollowed this Twitter feed. I'm easily annoyed by the useless and self-absorbed theology of "enough," "deserve," "earned," & "you are loved". Maybe I'm annoyed about positive thinking in general. Probably I'm jealous that someone could feel so secure in their life that the end of a relationship feels to them so like a death, a total unmooring, a violence.

"And her shame opened to her, like a door in the air."

wow, basically every passage in this book that I thought was for color / relief is later used to pull at my heartstrings, Melia's possession is *horrifying*

Ahhhhh when is the last time I yelled at a book like this!? You can't do that to us, Maya Deane! The backspace key is in the upper right!

"the gods take credit for whatever we do for ourselves"

the transposition here of intergenerational trans politics to the ancient world is absolutely wild

heck yes, way to work in Joseph.

No good comes from talking to dolphins.

"Can you believe their tails are split like that? Forked! For easy access!"

The inaccuracies have been driving me bonkers (Sadie is going to miss *bodegas that are open late at night* when she moves from Boston to LA?!?! disk drives that hold 3 1/4 floppy disks!? Grand Theft Auto is a *racing game*!? to launch an MMO, the *lead designer turns the servers on by flipping a switch*!?) but "some planes crashed into skyscrapers and other buildingS" - plural - for 9/11 takes the absolute cake.