#be****ing

But why should we have to be useful and for what reason? Who divided the world into useless and useful, and by what right? Does a thistle have no right to life, or a Mouse that eats the grain in a ware-house? What about Bees and Drones, weeds and roses? Whose intellect can have had the audacity to judge who is better, and who worse? A large tree, crooked and full of holes, survives for centuries without being cut down, because nothing could possibly be made out of it. This example should raise the spirits of people like us. Everyone knows the profit to be reaped from the useful, but nobody knows the benefit to be gained from the useless.

If you are alive or were recently alive on planet earth, then you are part of a deep network of relationships that exist outside of your own body and sphere of influence. You belong.

She takes the good tea down from the shelf, arranges the chamomile leaves in the tea decanter, lets it steep for the full ten minutes, removes the decanter from the steaming water, sits at the kitchen table. She uses the good honey. He never read her book. Growing up he never noticed the lobsters in the aquarium. Different planets: a telling phrase. Is it odd that he came closest to understanding her while leaving or does it make complete sense?

though I understood desire was meant to be audible, legible, mine never was, when I listened for it all I heard was an echo: want to, want to, want to? It was easier, in a way, sleeping with men, who were less likely to ask these sorts of questions, whose desire was often loud enough for the both of us. I wanted Kay's desire to be like this— implacable, resonant. If I flipped her over, pinned her arms over her head, ran my fingernail down her stomach, could I make her stop caring about what I wanted?

I didn't tell Caleb about her. When he told me about his sister dying of brain cancer—how he'd wished, amidst the endless doctors' appointments, to be an only child, how he couldn't forgive himself for wishing her gone—I considered it. But I understood the gendered dynamics of confession: men were meant to admit to doing terrible things. Women were meant to confess the terrible things that had been done to them.

My mother is a horde of bees. There is one bee for each part of her. My mother of truth-telling, my mother of discipline, my mother of affection. They all look the same — have you ever tried to tell two bees apart?—so I never know which mother I am talking to until she responds. This is the worst part, the moment of uncertainty. Some of my friends say they can tell their mothers apart. Maybe they can. Maybe if your mother is a horde of wolves or cats or lizards you can recognize her different faces. I wouldn't know; my mother is a horde of bees.