Toxin

“What a strange, cruel gift she has given me: to truly know myself, to know pleasure, to know freedom - and to wake and find myself in Hell.”
― Kat Dunn, Hungerstone

“How strange to feel something so close to mercy, whatever that was, and stranger still that it should be found in here of all places, at the end of a road of ruined houses by a toxic river. That among a pile of salvaged trash, he would come closest to all he ever wanted to be: a consciousness sitting under a lightbulb reading his days away, warm and alone, alone and yet, somehow, still somebody's son.”
― Ocean Vuong, The Emperor of Gladness

“I am not made for this, but Cora is. She skips lightly from stone to stone, vivacious and bright and so unencumbered. Jealousy is not an emotion I have easily tolerated in myself before, but it spills out now, raw and vicious, a blade turned against my own heart. I am jealous of Cora's passion and carelessness, but most of all I am jealous that she can experience all these things at an age when I held myself under such rigid control, when I was a creature made only from fear and survival. I am jealous that anybody has the gift of growing up differently.”
― Kat Dunn, Hungerstone

“I realize I am about to cry, because it is all entirely true, and the betrayal has opened a wound in me I think could split me in half.
"I'm sorry," says Cora, cowed. Her face is a crumpled flower, and I meet it with guilt.
"Never mind," I say. She wants me to console her, and I would, but I feel spread so thin that there is nothing in me left to give. Who will console me? Who thinks of how I feel?”
― Kat Dunn, Hungerstone