Hungerstone

by Kat Dunn

I furl myself in the quilt like an oyster in its shell with no pearl to show for the grit that works through it. Pain and blood, grief and hunger. To be a woman is a horror I can little comprehend.

I learned: learned, then, that mastery is the gift that befalls the isolated and unhappy. There was no help forthcoming, so I learned to take complete and total control myself. It has served me well. I knew what to do, and the certainty felt intoxicating. I was powerful. I was invulnerable.

It is over. Whatever scaffolding I have constructed to hold my life up cannot disguise that I lie in ruins.