‘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.’

‘It was her favorite color, and she loved the smoothness of the fabric on her skin.’

‘I imagine the moment Uncle Fi got sick. Who the guy was. Where they met. What they did.’

‘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.’

‘My memory isn’t a yard of film I can roll out and re-examine at will; it’s amorphous, immaterial, and in a state of active decay.’

‘She didn’t look like herself, though that couldn’t be helped; the amount of makeup on her face was enough to morph anyone’s features.’

‘People watch from the shore, waving and laughing like nothing is wrong. Like she belongs in the sea.’

‘Over the next few years, a series of massive rocks proposition me for a role as my moon.’

‘You waited 48 hours to go to the police. It took you that long to decide it was a crime, even if it would be called a domestic one, as if it were baked in the oven and smelled like apple crisp.’

‘How, she wonders, did she end up here? Different from her mother, but somehow exactly the same.’

‘She was not allowed to give up. She was programmed for success. She could not process a future without success.’

‘She considered telling Kayleigh about her obsession with Olive Oatman. How the tattoo made her feral, and how much Ellen wanted that for herself too.’

‘I craved the abandoned houses, the stillness of the woods.’

‘My mother always said that mingling too much with boys was dangerous. It could cause an accident and tarnish a girl’s life for good.’

‘In those spaces between their whispering mouths, I led a love life like nobody I’d ever known.’