“The air is damp. Her skin is covered in patterns of salt residue that look like tide marks on her dark skin. He doesn’t want the day to end. He doesn’t want the light to leave.”

“A dry chill has washed over her and the prayer she should be moaning has caught heavy in her throat, pulsing and chapped and itching to break. This prayer is too thick to swallow down, too harsh to cough up, hurting like stubborn birth.”

“When I was older, Mother, a Kool stabbed in your mouth, smoke drifting up into nothing your bright blue eyes like lasers I’d watch you stand in the dim foyer of our pink brick house those paintings of yours behind and around you seeming to nod, to hover near your shoulders like birds of prey.”

“Brave women of the Renaissance refused to sit, to be defined by others. They wielded the weaponry of brush, chisel, and palette knife: Sofonisba Anguissola, Artemisia Gentileschi, Elisabetta Sirani, and students in Bologna, Palermo, and Rome. Art history only began to admit their importance after several centuries of silence.”