We were like Betty and Veronica in those comics we read endlessly—practically identical except for our hair. Andrea’s was dark and I was redheaded. Her skin tanned easily and I worried about sunburns, but we were the same height and our bodies we [...]
That night Rachel and her grandmother ate dinner at a local restaurant, at a table in the backyard, which had an air of festivity—white lights strung along the fence and highlife pumping from the speakers in the corners. Groups of office workers an [...]
One night, she turns the novel’s last page. This is all— small house, plain street, some trees, sweet and irksome neighbors, dishes, bills, water leaks,
The mouse before me is dead, its body emptied of organs. Dead but still innervated, so still blinking in this world. I only harvest from their core—heart, lungs, liver, and the rest—but soon I will have to work with their brains.
I have come to realize how much I have, throughout my life, bought into the narrative of this alluring myth of personal responsibility and excellence. I realize how much I believe that all good things will come if I—if we—just work hard enough. This attitude leaves me always relentless, always working hard enough and then harder still.
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