My Throat an Open Grave Quotes

“Why has the thought of death been such a refuge to me? Because it's better, easier, than understanding all the ways I've fucked up, all the ways it's entirely my fault. Because I'm the charred remains of a girl who went too far, who burned too brightly until she was consumed.”
― Tori Bovalino, My Throat an Open Grave

“The things you believe, the things you were taught … they don’t align with the way you were treated. Be kind to yourself now. Worry about eternity later.”
― Tori Bovalino, My Throat an Open Grave

“I can’t believe I was afraid of her last night. We are the same, she and me: sacrifices, long since forgotten.”
― Tori Bovalino, My Throat an Open Grave

“The ghosts in this realm cannot hurt you. They do not exist. They are only reminders.”
― Tori Bovalino, My Throat an Open Grave

“That's my problem: I always trust the beautiful thing without stopping first to check its teeth.”
― Tori Bovalino, My Throat an Open Grave

“Until the end of time. To the end of the earth. I will carry you as far as I go, across this world and back.”
― Tori Bovalino, My Throat an Open Grave

“Words mean something. These songs, they tether this place to time, show some sort of change and shift besides the echoing memory of ghosts. And I am now a part of it.”
― Tori Bovalino, My Throat an Open Grave

“I barely knew her at all, and then she was gone, and everyone knew the absence of her better than anything.”
― Tori Bovalino, My Throat an Open Grave

“Under water, no one can remind me of all the things I've done wrong. All the ways I've brought this misfortune upon myself.”
― Tori Bovalino, My Throat an Open Grave

“That’s why Maria showed it to me. Not because she wanted me to solve her murder, not necessarily, but because she wanted to warn me. Maybe that’s why she was so afraid to show me—she knew. She knows.”
― Tori Bovalino, My Throat an Open Grave

“Part of my brain is latched onto this, incapable of understanding how he can be so easily softened into someone willing to give me comfort when no one else I’d always loved would.”
― Tori Bovalino, My Throat an Open Grave

“He makes my veins feel warm, alight with electricity. I don't understand how he does it, or if he knows, but he does. He's my absolute worst nightmare.”
― Tori Bovalino, My Throat an Open Grave

“He's the Lord of the Wood. For all I can tell, he knows everything. I think, taking in his gaze, that he certainly knows the worst of me. I hope I know what I'm doing too.”
― Tori Bovalino, My Throat an Open Grave

“Y’all’s hometown is awful.”
― Tori Bovalino, My Throat an Open Grave

“He stops in the middle, where the water is nearly up to my chest and just around his waist. His gaze is terrible as he looks down over me, hungry and wanton. Goosebumps rise on my skin. I want to let go of his hands, to use them to cover myself as the white fabric of my dress goes muddy and see-through. I think—terribly, irrepressibly—he’s enjoying this. “Once you get to the other side,” Pastor Samuel says, just to me, “he’ll come for you.”
― Tori Bovalino, My Throat an Open Grave

“I don’t have a problem with my faith, my God. I think I still believe in it—I don’t think I can become unmoored, believing in nonexistence. But that’s not the problem. It’s the men like Pastor Samuel, like Mr. Benton, like all those men who came before, who sneered at me and took advantage of us and killed us when we became too inconvenient.”
― Tori Bovalino, My Throat an Open Grave

“There’s a whole thing we’ve been taught about not seeking validation from a man, not letting someone tell us something about ourselves. But men have been telling me things all my life—that if I don’t keep my legs closed, I’m going to end up desecrated; that I’m a slut, a whore, a broken thing. And it’s not that Tristan is a boy, telling me something new. He’s erasing the things that have been pressed into me like fingerprints.”
― Tori Bovalino, My Throat an Open Grave

“Inside is a dress of soft, frothy white tulle and gossamer, embroidered with pink flowers and green vines and gold leaves and pearls that remind me all over again of our memories.”
― Tori Bovalino, My Throat an Open Grave

“imagine a knife, slicing me open from collarbone to pelvis, hands splitting me open to expose the evil black sludge of corruption within me. Everything inside of me is bad, sinful, awful:”
― Tori Bovalino, My Throat an Open Grave