Chapter 1

• We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.
• the hoops for the basketball nets were still in place, though the nets were gone.
• I could smell, faintly like an afterimage, the pungent scent of sweat
• a palimpsest of unheard sound
• There was old sex in the room and loneliness
• We yearned for the future. How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability?
• electric cattle prods
• chain-linked fence topped with barbed wire
• we still had our bodies
• we learned to whisper almost without sound
• Alma. Janine. Dolores. Moira. June.