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[...] Was it not having to look at him directly; was it the unusually lively nature of our dinner conversation; was it the crushing guilt of our expensive renovation; was it rainwater having filled the cistern of my body for so many years that I was a vessel running over; was it simply the goddamn …

It was the season when, after years of Sphinx-like secrecy, I left increasingly blatant breadcrumbs—had been scattering them without much intention or control ever since, six months prior, my husband had privately told me at Emily’s wedding (after first shouting at me in the hotel courtyard in fron…

[...] It was the season my blue-eyed, crooked-smiled, trusting husband was spending a fat wad of cash remodeling a house he believed he would die in, with me by his side. It was the season of accumulated dread from years of carefully parceling out sex I didn’t want to have, with a couple of glasses…

“I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about,” my father almost shouts at me now. I look at him, confused—even when we used to talk all the time, we didn’t talk like this. “I thought it would help you if you went out like the other girls, if you got a boyfriend. You seemed lonely. But I was a c…

If scrubbing my father’s blood can remove just the slightest bit of blood from my hands, I will do it forever, and nobody should be allowed to send me a meal train as consolation. I do not deserve a meal train. I don’t deserve anything.

When you hate yourself enough, there is a sharp tinge of sa…