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“Sadie felt a swelling of love and of worry for him—what was the difference in the end? It was never worth worrying about someone you didn’t love. And it wasn’t love if you didn’t worry.”
― Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
― Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
“the only way to understand the world as something other than a tale of loss is to see it as a tale of change.”
― North Woods
― North Woods
“It was past noon and the alley was deserted, overbright and shadow-less. She had just woken up from a nap. Long was at work. The dog was in a rectangular cage, its snout muzzled. It had been deposited on the curb in front of the restaurant, destined to be eaten in one of the seven ways advertised on the sign. It was a small, skeletal thing, with jutting hip bones Winnie could make out all the way from the balcony, but it was so filthy that she couldn't tell what color it was supposed to be.
And as she watched, the animal lifted its head and locked eyes with Winnie, and Winnie had to hold on to the railing to steady herself because there was such raw anger in those eyes that her whole body shuddered in response. In that moment Winnie felt something strangely akin to envy. There was something wild and unquenchable even in a cage, in the last hours before it became someone's dinner that the dog possessed, which Winnie had never figured out how to cultivate correctly inside herself. She did not pity the dog; she pitied herself, and this was why she knew she had to free it.”
― Build Your House Around My Body
And as she watched, the animal lifted its head and locked eyes with Winnie, and Winnie had to hold on to the railing to steady herself because there was such raw anger in those eyes that her whole body shuddered in response. In that moment Winnie felt something strangely akin to envy. There was something wild and unquenchable even in a cage, in the last hours before it became someone's dinner that the dog possessed, which Winnie had never figured out how to cultivate correctly inside herself. She did not pity the dog; she pitied herself, and this was why she knew she had to free it.”
― Build Your House Around My Body
“Winnie felt better in the sunlight. She let her hand rest on the tree's ropy trunk. The bark was smooth beneath her fingers. These were the breed of strangling ficus that spent two hundred years braiding their bodies around a host tree, killing it while gradually assuming its form. Parasite, doppelgänger, sarcophagus. Winnie admired it. What she wished, she reflected dreamily, her whole back now leaning against the tree, was for the same thing to happen to her. For the new self she'd hoped she would become in Saigon a better self, a banyan self, resilient and impenetrable to encase Old Winnie completely in its cage-like lattice of roots and then let her wither away inside. She wanted there to be no trace left of that thirteen-year-old girl that Dr. Sang had remembered.”
― Build Your House Around My Body
― Build Your House Around My Body
“On good nights, Winnie managed to glean five nonconsecutive hours of a shallow and unsatisfying slumber. But those nights were
rare. Usually, Winnie was wide awake between midnight and dawn and
passed the time by staring at the street below the apartment. Her room did not have its own balcony, just one window outfitted with a cage-like lattice designed to keep out burglars. When the afternoon sun came through at the right angle it created shadowy tessellations on her bed, and Winnie would lie down and position herself so that the scales of light would be cast onto her own skin. After dark, she climbed up and perched motionless on the sill for hours with her legs poking out through the bars, until her lower half went numb. She liked the feeling of having nothing beneath her feet while she was three stories high. It allowed her to pretend for a moment that she was no longer a girl, just a hovering, discorporate displacement of night sky. Safely concealed by the treetops, she could clock the nocturnal comings and goings of the trash collectors and grilled-squid carts and irresponsible, drunk revelers driving home from bars, occasionally wobbling off the road and crashing into a utility pole.”
―
rare. Usually, Winnie was wide awake between midnight and dawn and
passed the time by staring at the street below the apartment. Her room did not have its own balcony, just one window outfitted with a cage-like lattice designed to keep out burglars. When the afternoon sun came through at the right angle it created shadowy tessellations on her bed, and Winnie would lie down and position herself so that the scales of light would be cast onto her own skin. After dark, she climbed up and perched motionless on the sill for hours with her legs poking out through the bars, until her lower half went numb. She liked the feeling of having nothing beneath her feet while she was three stories high. It allowed her to pretend for a moment that she was no longer a girl, just a hovering, discorporate displacement of night sky. Safely concealed by the treetops, she could clock the nocturnal comings and goings of the trash collectors and grilled-squid carts and irresponsible, drunk revelers driving home from bars, occasionally wobbling off the road and crashing into a utility pole.”
―
Kellynn’s 2025 Year in Books
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