Slow Fire Burning

That again. What it always came down to. You couldn’t understand, you’re not a mother. You’ve never experienced love, not really. You don’t have it inside you, whatever it is, the capacity for limitless, unconditional love. The capacity for unbounded hatred, either.

She might have grabbed hold of his hair, pulled his head back, and jammed the piece of glass into his throat.

But now it is too late.

Why must people take what does not belong to them?

That’s what he is. He is grasping, calculating, and manipulative.

As he leaves, he hums a tune, and in a voice full of tears, he sings

What I took from her, I won’t give back

Like loneliness, the absence of friendship was self-perpetuating: the harder you tried to make people like you, the less likely they were to do so; most people recognized right away that something was off, and they shied away.

She shuffled exhaustedly down the walkway and down all those stairs, legs heavy as her heart.

The sensation shamed her again: it was like holding a child, like holding her sister when she’d been a little girl—tiny and fierce and funny. Infuriating. Lifetimes ago.

once you’d fallen in love you could never be truly free, could you?

she thought she might die from the shock, at first, but then that wore off, and the grief came, and that was worse.