All plugged up with wood, I feel like a bastardized Pinocchio.

With a bottle full of chicken blood, she bathed the Lieutenant in red, from head to toe.

twelve new years

This made for juicy morsels of gossip for the goûter at four o’clock

I wrack my brain for ways of describing this pain but nothing original comes to mind.

More things fall from the sky now.

He had once asked his mother to describe his father’s face, a question whose weight he did not recognise until he had been older.

I was angry then. No. I wanted to be just like her.

I went on a jog this morning in a never-ending Chinatown.

In the silence, his forfeit festered.

Do we need a man? I want to ask her, but her eyes are bright like poppies in summer heat.

before she could contemplate doing something for herself with her time

She didn’t mind amusing them—humor was part of her intent

We resented her white knuckles, darting eyes.

Mei had been in jail for six months and a handful of days.

I think about your hands when I look at mine

但巡迴遊樂園並不害怕，只要再次拆卸自毀，它們換個地方就可以重新活過來。
| As long as the traveling carnival committed self-destruction, it could come alive once more in a different place.

And yet you’re still here.

Chow reminded Cheng that a lot of writers drink but drinking does not turn him into a writer.