Desiree

“Witch. The word slithers from the mouth like a serpent, drips from the tongue as thick and black as tar. We never thought of ourselves as witches, my mother and I. For this was a word invented by men, a word that brings power to those that speak it, not those that it describes. A word that builds gallows and pyres, turns breathing women into corpses.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“You once told me that the human eye is god's loneliest creation. How so much of the world passes through the pupil and still it holds nothing. The eye, alone in its socket, doesn't even know there's another one, just like it, an inch away, just as hungry, as empty.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Will’s broken birds always emitted their own light, big-eyed and bony. At dinner parties, she wanted to touch their throats and play with their long, tangled hair, wondered what it was like to wear sadness so close to the skin and be loved for it.”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

“I may have said: it is the perfect escape, isn’t it? To lose your mind. To go mad. To fall apart, go crazy, all of it. To become a patient. To need help and to receive help. To be cared for. I would have added: the perfect escape becomes a trap. You learn this soon enough. You escape and then you begin to play the part, people respond to you that way, the role you are in. And there you are, trapped. It might become your life.”
― Suzanne Scanlon, Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen