For She Is Wrath

by Emily Varga

Or perhaps I needn’t have done anything. Perhaps he always had the capacity to do this to me, and I was too in love with him to see it.

This was who I would become in front of him. A sweet, beautiful confection. And when he bit into the honeyed sugar, it would be poison filling his mouth.

The problem when someone you loved betrayed you was that you had a lifetime of good memories with them that you had to examine in a different light. What was once a safe place to be—beside him, engulfed in his arms, inhaling the smell of rainstorms and pine—was actually the most dangerous place of all.

For a second I forgot I was pretending to be someone different. I forgot that I was looking at him through unfamiliar eyes. And when he met my stare it must have showed, because his own eyes widened, and he tilted his face as if he were examining a puzzle he couldn’t quite figure out.

A history of women and girls being wronged by men who never had any consequences. Now I would be the consequences. “I choose vengeance. I choose death. And in the end, that’s what you chose too.”