“The good memories turn. Admit you loved me, the woman mutters over her mother’s grave.”

“Novelty is a particularly dense manifestation of relying on the Other to become simultaneously the grounding of and the escape from the Self.”

“I commit to never speaking of this Loyalty Oath and its existence to anyone.”

“The pieces collected here offer not answers, but forms of attention.”

If I haven’t been home in three years, does home still exist?

“I was a veritable saint. Not that I was opposed to doing any of those things, I just didn’t happen to do them, I didn’t know how to be more of a sinner.”

“By eighth grade, I was numb. Baba’s growing-up stories described a country that only existed in the minds of those who had left.”

“Even at its inception, friendship demands sincerity. Sadeeq derives from sidq, truth, so the bond begins not in affection, but in honesty.”

“When I think of Pauline screaming my heart slips and I remember being clumsy with your dead body, knowingknowing you were still there zooming around the room scared but listening”

“jules was not / trying / to be a man / either. us lit blue / on the hotel / bed by a dim bulb.”

“At some point I became keenly aware / of my unhinged potential to be immersed / in the nothingness that follows, / you know what I mean?”

“My grandmother died three years before I was born, when my mother was pregnant with my older brother. I cannot tell you what that time was like, because no one speaks of it.”

“Our mother’s hands made us out of / buried bone, dreams burnt like wings / birding flightless girls.”

“This anthology set out to bring forth the nuanced complexities and beauty of stories that resist category and make no apology for bleeding beyond the lines.”

“do you consider yourself a good and pleasing thing? / if no, how long until fluent in the language of flagellation?”