The Disappearance of Astrid Bricard

by Natasha Lester

For every woman who’s ever had a man make her into someone less than she truly is.

“Loving someone and making them feel loved are two different things. It’s easy to just love, but it takes effort to make another person believe in that love.

history is a patriarch with a thin spotlight of memory always trained on a man.

Why is the world so full of older men all telling a young woman she won’t be able to do what she wants? How do women walk down the street beneath the weight of all the doubt everyone wants them to carry? Why is powerlessness the only thing the world wants to gift them?

It’s funny how, only when a little light comes in do you understand you’ve become so used to darkness that you’ve forgotten stars exist.

How many girls ruined with words are strewn across the world? How many women caught in the line of a song? In a dress? In a painting? In black type on white paper? Frozen in oil, in thread, in a C-major chord? But nobody, no woman, is one note, one color—one fine strand of silk.