“Sometimes, the bees tell her, things that are sweet like this attract the worst kind of hungry.”

“I did not like to be touched, but it was a strange dislike. I did not like to be touched because I craved it too much. I wanted to be held very tight so I would not break.”

“There can be no rebirth without a dark night of the soul, a total annihilation of all that you believed in and thought that you were.”

“I wish there was someone I could have written to after that, someone I could have written to explain how awful it was to have someone touch you, then look at you properly and change his mind.”

“Today, I ripped you from my mouth like the bitterest apology I’ve ever given. I washed you off of my skin, watched the last of you disappear down the shower drain. Today, I made a choice not to set fire to the person I was when you loved me, not to burn myself to the ground just to see if you’d come running to the flames. Today, I stared down the morning until my eyes burned like suns. I left the house. I wore a black dress that hugged my hips like they would never have to apologize for their vastness again. I tore you from my hands, picked the splinters out with a pair of tweezers, one by one. I wore red lipstick and stained all my coffee cups with my own mouth. I looked in mirrors and smiled. I walked to the park and cried watching baby ducklings follow their mother into the water for the first time. I got drunk with my friends and didn’t bring you up once. I danced under the streetlights and kissed a stranger who tasted nothing like you. I went home alone and slept for twelve hours. I didn’t see you painted on the inside of my eyelids like the ceiling of an abandoned cathedral. I didn’t break a single dish in my house. I showered until all the hot water was gone and, my God, I was so brave, to keep going without you. To dig through the layers of you and find myself glowing, no longer the moth, but the light, itself. I was so brave to get left by you and not fall to pieces. to get left by you and not fall at all.”

““Your mother did not raise you with a wolf in your chest so you could howl over losing a man.””

“Women like you should not be brutalised by love. You are generations of blood and fire, you are all war. Take your knees from the floor. Don’t look at him. Something violent and brutal and ugly is howling inside of you. Act like it.”

“Her eyes reflected the defeat she carried in her heart, I felt death just looking at them.”

“You’re a woman, use it; bring every man you meet to his motherfucking knees”