“i have been wallowing in thought regarding family business. please don’t ask if things are fine at home. they are. but my siblings don’t want me to read them bedtime stories anymore, and my mother mentions that i should maybe try living on my own. i was growing tired of re-learning the route back each night anyway. i still collect chestnuts on the walks i take to put in my pocket, just to have something round and smooth to hold onto. shiny things distract me. i am starting to forget what is was about people that tethered me. i could never bear a child, let alone raise one. the idea that this abomination feeding from the fumes i run on could propagate in a gushing womb—a part of me out of my control fumbling amok—seems terrifying. for the sake of public safety i make myself uninhabitable. it would have the murky eyes of a dead fish. i am not cruel enough to give a creature with eyes like that the right to be born. i wouldn’t love it. i wouldn’t love it like i don’t love the ballroom guests waltzing in and out of my tunnel-vision. i wouldn’t love what is mine and i wouldn’t love what isn’t. i am sorry to everyone who has to bear my child.”
—s.k.
