The Unmaking of June Farrow

by Adrienne Young

I suspected that the ache of missing her would mostly come from those little things. The holes that were left behind, empty places I’d stumble upon now that she was gone.

She was always smiling. Always polite in that way that southern people were taught to be. Like nothing dark had ever touched her.

Most of the time, I could feel the episodes coming. It was like static in the air, the details of the world sharpening and brightening like the surge of a lightbulb just before my mind slipped. Other times, it snuck up on me.

I knew what I was doing, throwing myself down one rabbit hole to keep from falling down the other. I was distracting myself from what was happening. And deep down, I knew that it didn’t matter how deep the hole went. Eventually, I was going to hit the bottom.

Besides Birdie, he was the only person I had in the world, and that filled me with a tremendous amount of guilt.

“Hi,” I said, the lonely word carrying with it a thousand questions.

The morbid, superior curiosity of people who pretended to be good Christian folk was something still alive and well in Jasper.

and I couldn’t stop thinking that where we stood was the center of something, a place that created the kind of gravity that made galaxies.

And I didn’t think there was any way to ever come back from that explosion of light that had birthed a universe inside of me when she said that word. Mama.

“Who is Birdie?” I whispered. Margaret didn’t look at me. Instead, her gaze went across the sitting room, to where Annie was standing on the stool in the kitchen. She was reaching for the jelly jar on the counter. The hardening stone in my throat plummeted into my stomach, and I stared at her, her blond hair like glowing threads of gold in the light coming through the window. Birdie.

OH MY GOD

She was a prism that colored me and my world with a story.

I loved him. More than I ever thought was possible for one being to hold inside of them.