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"The entire time, he'd only ever looked at my body, never at my face, his empty eyes hungry, never seeing me at all. I wasn't the presence of a person, but a body. I could have said anything, he wouldn't have heard me. He'd never responded, not by stopping, not with his words."
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"His abusemakes her an anvilwithout spark."
"But I don't know what to him about the aftermath of killing a person. About how they never leave you."
"One day I was able to get up, after gathering all my strength. I wanted to see myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me."
"I wonder if anyone gets through childhood without being broken. I certainly did not."
"Struggling transforms her captor into a Chinese finger trap. She's suffocating. Sucking in air without relief. Her lungs expand. Contract. Expand. They fill with lies and broken promises. With despair and lost hope. Each inhale is empty. Invisible hands reach into her body and constrict around her windpipe. She watches her friends collapse like supernovae, their cognizance disappearing into a black hole. A black hole she's quickly cascading into. The dark consumes, bleeds into her vision. She blinks. Catches icy blue eyes peeking out from the shadows."
"My traumatic experience was life changing."
"I wished at that moment that the Wests had killed me, it would have been a merciful release from the hell that DC Smith was putting me through. This barrage of questions by DC Smith and his heavy-handedness into this inquiry and his bullying barrack-room interrogation style of interviewing had left me feeling shamed."
Explore more quotes by Aspen Matis
"I was promising myself strength.I had to write it, say it, make the effort and fake it before I actually believed I could do it."
"My path, beyond doubt or denial. I just hadn't looked toward it. I wasn't lost. I'd always known the way. If I'd only allowed myself to look. I had never been lost, only scared."
"All I could think as he was speaking was that, if he touched me at all, all the miles I'd walked, the pain I'd felt, the beauty I'd drunken like milk, like good wine making me happy, the four million steps I'd taken, would all add up to nothing. They'd be stolen. They'd vanish like the teeth children lose when they get hit. Only after the blood was washed away would I see that they were gone."
"The bravest thing I ever did was leave there. The next bravest thing I did was come back, to make myself heard."
"I saw for the first time that I could stop giving people the power to make me feel disrespected. In my anger I began to see the absurdity of allowing this boy to shame me."
"I sensed he was the one who might be able to see me clearly, the way I most wished to be seen."
"The trees were friendly, they gave me rest and shadowed refuge. Slipping through them, I felt safe and competent. My whole body was occupied. I had little energy to think or worry."
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