Rabbit Hole

by Kate Brody

“You’re Jake,” I say. “The picture. The message, with the beach—” I stop. “You doxxed me.”

Ugh dumb bitch

“She was like an older sister,” Mickey says. “It sounds like she was fucking your dad.”

Men who split in half cannot be patched together. Daughters who are lost can never be found.

The violence of the world that was always there, lurking behind a thin scrim now brought into the stark gray light that passes for sunshine up here.

Zaftig.”

Yiddish for juicy

“They’re so great though, kids. They shape your life into a recognizable form.”

When we’re born, she told me, we can’t tell ourselves from our mothers. She said that when her son looked at her, he thought he was looking at himself. That when she held him, there was no distinction between them. Total unification. Mother as home. You have to learn that you’re alone. That comes later.

I had always thought of my memory as something like a historical record. Evidence. Now, I’m not so sure. Now, I have a new appreciation for the unreliable narrator. Now, I understand how a normal person could go mad. It takes one tug at one thread, and the whole illusion vanishes.

By the end of the night, I’m beginning to feel moved by the letter that I wrote. I’m beginning to forget my own bullshit.

So she just made up a note?