‘Every morning since her disappearance I pounded the sidewalks.’

‘You imagined it in a large bed, a romantic headboard like something from a fin de siècle Parisian novel.’

‘There is no embarrassment— that was swallowed by the acid— but I know that future me, anxiously retracing the events of this night, will be horrified.’

‘Once, long ago, it had been her shyness that trapped her.’

‘The room was silent save for the rustling sound of clothes while Ting slowly undressed.’

‘Her hand is trembling when I take hold of it. Everything begins to make sense now.’

‘They come to me when my pain is at its worst: a yawning bear, black throated.’

‘Heterosexual women don't feel what I feel when I look at your pictures.’

‘She didn’t have that tenderness for me that the boys got in abundance.’

‘Apparently no one wanted to invest in who the Stanford computer science department had anointed as the frontrunner for producing machine consciousness.’

‘He had taken her secret with him.’

‘One minute, a student would be walking to class or eating a baggy of trail mix, and the next minute she would explode into a screaming gulf of fire.’

‘The radio is talking about the spate of recent attacks. There is no link between them, other than they are all unprovoked acts of violence against women.’

‘The Rotterdam canals are painted an early-evening blue, and the last dry leaves tremble on their twigs.’

‘Of all the reasons to return to my hometown, I never thought speaking to the police would be one.’

‘As you walk side by side in silence, you feel the urge to tell her how much you love her.’

‘Soon, she’s all cracks. Soon, she crumbles. I’m left behind with a mess of rubble and dust.’

‘The sunlight prickles my eyes; I wonder when I last ventured out.’

‘Poets love love, do they not? They love describing, deconstructing, cornering, hi-jacking, naming, owning.’

‘They have come to find joy, create explosions and reach ecstasy. The circle throbs with the pulse of shared expectations.’