Nicole

“She noticed a large grease stain on the front of her coveralls as she stood up. A few half-hearted wipes told her it was a lost cause. That’s what she got for wearing her good coveralls for a teardown. What had possessed her to even do so? Brionie hadn’t noticed. It would take more than that to get her attention”
― Lise MacTague, Demon in the Machine

“The night was unseasonably cold for late spring, causing a lacy fog to climb up the rails of the bridge, like the dead crawling up from their graves, slinking across the ground in hunt for life.”
― Stacey Marie Brown, Savage Lands

“Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining.”
― Chloe Walsh, Keeping 13

“I starved for so long I feared my own hunger for a wolf at the door. She let out the muscled animal of my tongue. Panting, teeth small nipped stars, she switched off the lights. In the slippery dark of her I dissolved, no troubled body or changed face, only this felt through touch, through taste, through scent and breath and pulsing absolution of night, and: Yes to oysters swollen through butter. Yes to things cooled on glass, my hand a hot knife between. Yes to proscuitto, its salt slick, to avocado bursting, ripe. Our teeth clanged. I tasted blood and chocolate. Yes to the fathicksweet of it, to cream, to froth that rises, to the crunched lace of the ear and the tender behind the knee, to that join at the legs where she softened, dimpled, begged me to bite. Three years can you imagine...no lovers no family no feasts...and suddenly this largesse of freckles down her torso, this churning, spilling free.”
― C Pam Zhang, Land of Milk and Honey