For She Is Wrath

by Emily Varga

we were two daughters, two people who had been wronged, two people trying to get back what we once had, though we probably never would.

As if I still had capacity to yearn for someone who was never there to begin with.

I didn’t become who I was here. Not really. It wasn’t until I had lain on that stone floor in prison that the molten iron had truly entered my veins.

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.

These were the hands that would see me through this.

“You know I’d follow you anywhere, Dani.”

“We’ll be free? Or broken?”

“I would read you like a novel. From cover to cover, learning everything about you.” He tilted his head. “Leisurely, only taking me out when you felt like it?” I snorted. “Is that how you read your novels, Mazin? How uninspiring. No, I mean in a fierce frenzy, by candlelight, devouring you until I finished every page and committed it to memory, and then I’d flip right back to the front and start again from the beginning.”

“I’d read you like scripture, a prayer. And all the worship I felt, I’d heap at your feet.”

the boy who had given me everything and then burned it all to the ground.

“A knife goes with every outfit.”

A history of women and girls being wronged by men who never had any consequences. Now I would be the consequences.

“Are you flirting with me about getting beheaded?” His eyes lit up. “I can’t think of anyone else who might even consider it flirting.”

He’d given me something real, and I’d just eaten some nuts in response.

“What you are saying is that you liked it when I stabbed you.”

“Sometimes I rub the center of my palm when I’m missing you.”

“Shall I make you mine?” I whispered, tasting the salt of his skin. He laughed against my mouth. “You already have.”

We were what he made us.

“I remember every scar on your body. Especially the ones I gave you.

He knelt before me baring everything, as if there was nothing between us but this truth, this fight, this shared misery.

“Dani.” He said the words softly, so soft I could barely hear him over the rain. “I’m sorry.”

Because when I dream, it’s always of you.

“Did you think I wouldn’t know you? I’d know you with any face. Any skin. Any hair. A thousand djinn could disguise you from me and I’d still be able to find you just by the sound of your breath.”

I can’t make right what I did, I can’t change it. But I can beg. I can promise that in all things, in all ways, I belong to you.

“I made you what you are, boy.” “No,” said Maz, tipping his chin at me. “She did.”

You may have given him forgiveness, but that doesn’t mean you owe him kindness.”