For She Is Wrath

by Emily Varga

I had a renewed motivation, a hope that I didn’t expect alive in my chest. With every new inch of earth dug I moved closer to the possibility.

“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.”

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.”