I Who Have Never Known Men

by Jacqueline Harpman

Is there a satisfaction in the effort of remembering that provides its own nourishment, and is what one recollects less important than the act of remembering?

As if talking only served to make things happen. Talking is existing.

and I understood what Anthea called beauty, which apparently had been so abundant in their world.

Is our definition of beauty based on what others tell us? What society collectively decides? Or it is an innate feeling? I believe true beauty is innate, the feeling when you look at a sunset, or your friend all dressed up, or a colourful meal, so I think finding beauty is an inevitable human experience. But if we create a catalogue of what we find beautiful are we incapable of finding new beauty?¿ idk, I’d like to think we’d keep finding new beauty.

She thought of Mary-Jane who’d gone off to hang herself in the bunker.

This is rogue but I think the taboo may have been way more common and accepted millennia ago. Death is inevitable, pain is not

time is a question of being human

when a tree branch snaps, does it make a sound if it bares no witness? Or is it the witness who creates the event

and I still don’t exist because nobody is reading them.