The Book of Ayn

by Lexi Freiman

Sometimes I cried but then that began to feel productive, like catharsis, and so I stopped mid-gape and just lay there.

“It’s evil trash. Like the Kmart in Astor Place.”

Having a child felt like the least fun way I could destroy myself.

“All romantic love is just an exercise in ego.” I must have withered then because Ming put her long, cold hand over mine. “But it’s okay, Anna. Everybody does it.”

And so it was strange to be nearly forty and not the beautiful, erotic adult woman to my own ten-year-old daughter. To be still the guilty, creeping child.

“Because the poison and the medicine are one.” “Like Big Pharma?”

What I thought remained the most valuable thing about me.