Family members "flicker like distant stars"
The narrator's recurring sense of people receding "like distant stars" turns the slow loss of loved ones into an astronomical image.
Suitcase that can "run off and join the ballet"
This is an example of King's compact, often surprising figure of speech.
Pain that "turns women into birds"
One of King's most resonant images, it appears in Part III in the hospital scenes. The narrator watches it happen to Yash's shrinking mother and dreads becoming a bird herself in a hospital corridor.
