I felt my chest crack open. I wanted to crawl inside his wounds and live there. I told him about my mother’s illness, the slow erasure of her mind, how I studied neurotoxins because watching her forget me felt like being poisoned drop by drop.
I looked at him—really looked. The crooked smile wasn't charming anymore. It was a rictus. The vulnerability wasn't intimacy. It was a trap. darling venom pdf
“You’re fascinated by how things break,” he said one night, nodding at my notes on tetrodotoxin. I felt my chest crack open