Yen

“Silence is an incomplete metaphor. It can't capture frustration and complicity, its function as a retreat and a burrow. It holds a place for concealment, secrecy and deception. It holds a place for reverence. Living with a profound layer of silence wedged between yourself and your family can be such a source of sorrow, even when it is necessary.”
― Elias Jahshan, This Arab Is Queer: An Anthology by LGBTQ+ Arab Writers

“That's what scares me. My life is . . . it. There's nothing else, on either end of it. I don't have remnants in the same way that you do, or a plate inside my chest. I don't know what my pieces were before they were me, and I don't know what they'll become after. All I have is right now, and at some point, I'll just end, and I can't predict when that will be, and - and if I don't use this time for something, if I don't make the absolute most of it, then I'll have wasted something precious.”
― Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

“Effy hated that she couldn’t tell right from wrong, safe from unsafe. Her fear had transfigured the entire world. Looking at anything was like trying to glimpse a reflection in a broken mirror, all of it warped and shattered and strange.”
― Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning

“I think our appearance is meaningless,” I sputter.
“We’re all just skeletons covered in skin.”
― Emily R. Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead