Blackouts

by Justin Torres

Journeys end in lovers meeting

“Darling, the only thing anyone should be embarrassed about is taking themselves too seriously. Anyway, isn’t that what mystery is? Your blackouts, these erasures? Frustration as art?”

If everything stayed the same, you wouldn’t have cause for your precious nostalgia, nene.)

More often … the urge to document and the urge to disappear, though contradictory, are fused. —HEATHER LOVE, Underdogs

The lasting shock from that day was not the seizure—no surprise his sister might succumb to a contorting madness, what with all the erotic chaos, the trembling energy, the too-muchness of that home, of childhood itself—but he was surprised to find his father even capable of that kind of terrible calming care, or his mother capable of such seriousness, such focus. This was the quality of attention he had always sought from each, and now, with certainty, he knew the cost.

Explaining away the “bad father” and redirecting us toward the “good enough father” is so often one of a mother’s covert responsibilities.

“For Jan, Grandmother is the idealized feminine archetype: tough and arid. Why don’t you ever cry, Oma? Jan asks, and the grandmother shrugs. Better to keep dry.”