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And then I felt the fury every woman feels, on learning that the man who broke her still breathes. Why was Caden even alive? What purpose could he serve? And why was he still going out, having a nice time, when he ought to be sitting on the floor of a featureless garret, weeping over my old text me…

When I saw them, I felt loneliness of a different grade. I missed my friends, I thought, as I watched them move onto the dance floor. How carelessly I’d thrown them away when I moved here. It takes years to know a person, for those connections to bed down and mature, and I’d discarded mine, as if f…

By then, I’d picked up a smattering of the language, as an expat picks up a few phrases after six months in the new country. My ex is crazy: I treat women poorly. My ex is controlling: I am a cheat. My ex is bitter: I am incapable of linking cause and effect. My ex took me for everything I had: she…

Caden flicked disconsolately among channels. It pained him to know there were people in the world who thought him imperfect. I’d taken him for an adult because he earned a lot of money, but he was like me. Critique gave him heartburn. Credit checks, tax returns, medicals, appraisal in any form. In …

“Your pussy. It’s so tight.”

I used to like hearing him say this. Lately, it depressed me. It made me consider the impossible, Escheresque arc of male desire, the built-in obsolescence of the female body. If a man loved a woman, he’d want her to have his child. And when she gave him that child, …