He was also removing all traces of any tiny leftover parts, and suddenly a ritual which I’d always found incestuous and gross seemed to me more like a desperate act on Joseph’s part to get out, to leave, to extract every little last remnant and bring it into open air.
The stories themselves haunt, they stick around, they linger, inhabiting a little corner of the reader’s brain and resurfacing to evoke mystery or sadness or longing.
