Hungerstone

by Kat Dunn

instead 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.

The blood that came each month after. At first, a disappointment, then a fear, then a grief, then an inevitability. I was good for nothing but blood.

There are perhaps some graces to being unmothered. My body is as unused as a dress not yet worn, and so remains as crisp and fresh as the day it was bought.

I thought marriage freedom when I sought it; I thought it safety. But sometimes, when my control slips, I think there is only safety and certainty in death.

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.

Let this life of mine be about more than pain.

A friendless child in a friendless world makes life a job of survival.

All we can hope for in life is to know one’s own desires in order to be able to act on them. To want is to surrender to uncertainty. To step into the unknown. To expose ourselves to all possible outcomes and trust we will not be destroyed by disappointment.

Men conspiring in dark little holes like vermin, chittering their spiteful thoughts to one another, make the world like this, hurt people like that. I hate them I hate them I hate them.