Toxin

“It's warm in this house where we will die, you and I.”
― Ocean Vuong, Time Is a Mother

“Let this life of mine be about more than pain.”
― 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 safe if I obey and reduce and control, just as I am not safe if I rebel and shout and anger.”
― Kat Dunn, Hungerstone