I find it curious that she hasn’t been excommunicated. Are her small acts of rebellion a convenient outlet for Peters, a type of performance that satisfies the colonists’ need to assert themselves, and that allows Peters to act with impunity on a larger scale?

Wild was the worst thing you could become in a community rigged for compliance.

Where does violence go, if not directly back into our blood and bones?

Most of us, she said, absolve ourselves of responsibility for change by sentimentalizing our pasts.

When I put the poncho on to show Elf she said farewell to arms.

The truth is, I don’t have a catchy method of conversing and yet unfortunately suffer of a minute to minute basis the agony of the unexpressed thought.

I understand that if you say a certain word over and over and it begins to make you feel bad then you should goddamn stop saying that word.

True love, I said. And yet I’m sticking around unreasonably and knowing it’s impossible because who knows? I want to find out. I live hopefully.

Nic loves Elf’s odd requests, each one is like a holiday for him... and he’s not a Mennonite, which is important – in a man – for Elf. Mennonite men have wasted too much of her time already, trying to harvest her soul and shackle her to shame.

We stopped talking for a long, long time. A long time. Nurses came and went attaching and detaching things. Hundreds of thousands of babies were born while we weren’t talking. The continents continued to separate at the same page as fingernails growing.