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by Rivers Solomon

If I make Elijah too many snacks, it’s because food-making is effortless compared to the real task of child-rearing: emotional presence.

Mother, I’ve never heard of a paradise with a talking serpent, nor one where I must daily encounter food I’m forbidden to eat.

I may be newly made, but even I know apples are to be consumed. They’re on the list of WeightWatchers foods worth one point.

The world unfolds according to a logic most strange when you’re a child, and it wouldn’t do any good to try to parse it.

Every day, everyone is a hundred different people: who they are when they are alone and feeling fuckable, who they are when they are alone and feeling unfuckable, who they are when they are grief wrecked, when they are joy smacked.

The flight attendant brings us our rectangular tray of scalding-hot food. It’s disgusting. It’s delicious. I devour it like a last meal, the way I do all airplane food.

She’s responsible, sensible. Sometimes I think this is enough to make her turn out okay. The kids who grow up fine do so because of us, or despite us.

How dare you, baby? How dare you let the world win? Don’t you ever try to kill yourself again.

Okay, but like, what of anyone’s father. Goodness, we can’t be disappointed by men we never once believed in.

I know the pain of realizing what you’re capable of, knowing that if there is a god, you are fucked.

I find nothing wrong with a phase of eating only cereal, and have been through such times myself,

I will feed you until we find your favorite food, and I will make it for you always.