Refusal brought too much attention, so I was ready the next time the tongue came towards me. I snatched its grey-white tip and felt the weight of its inner meat slide down in the sheath of its skin. I lifted it high so the other end would not touch me and passed it along.

Standing on the deck feels like being at the edge of an empty picture frame, or on a stage upon which a show might be performed—or might not be, depending on your luck.

“Cover yourself in honey, raw, roll it into your cheeks like iron scraping away at the edges of you”

I wish I had known better at eight when my mother's stroke changed my life. But not all knowledge arrives when it should.

That he spends more time narrating what he would do to you than doing most, if any, of it is the kind of intermittent reward used to create addiction in lab rats. You are the rat.

In my twenties I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a mother. When my friends started having kids, however, I worried I was missing out on something.