Hungerstone

by Kat Dunn

I am a mirror for him, and I have learned how to show the desired reflection. I have learned I am no more than that.

“You think you must be good company for someone to come to your side?”

“Wanting is not selfish,

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

but most of all I am jealous that she can experience all these things at an age when I held myself under such rigid control, when I was a creature made only from fear and survival. I am jealous that anybody has the gift of growing up differently.

It was intolerable to see someone else live all that I was denied. I hated her, because I did not understand what it was I had lost before I saw it in her.