The Three Lives of Cate Kay

by Kate Fagan

the day I caught the sickness of wanting to eat the world.

the universe is all there is; there’s nothing outside the universe.

The song churned up everything I felt about Amanda. An ethereal blend of desire and devotion, of joy and melancholy. A nearly lethal cocktail.

Her understanding of me caused a pang, the sudden pounding of a drum, to reverberate once through my chest.

People didn’t give Manhattan enough credit for its sunsets,

(How, how, how would I ever fall in love with someone else with her around?

She would have true freedom. With me.

oh no

“March,” while subtly shaking her head and I knew to finish it with “in like a lion, out like a lamb,”

What many people don’t understand about serious injury or illness is that what you’re really coming to grips with isn’t the physical limitations (although there is that); it’s how the physical limitations alter your interactions with the world. At first, you can only take. You take people’s time, their physical energy, their emotional reserves. You’re in a state of need and you take, take, take without giving. And taking without giving, that messes with your head.

Then Cass said, “So…,” injecting the tiny word with steroids, so it was robust.

She was speaking again, but my focus, and my eyes, was on the space between us.

everyone responds to her like this it must be exhausting

The cover of night made me curious. Was I real? Was this real?

my brain has built a life with you without me even knowing. I love you.

the false binary the world presents us—that it’s either ambition or relationships?”

she needed to prove herself—if only to herself.

I worried that love just wasn’t for me. How much love do you get to run away from in this life before you’re cut off for good?

I’d just come back from a run—my latest method for quieting my brain.

as a kid when I caught the sickness of wanting to eat the world.

“The trick of life, as I see it now, is to make what’s around you beautiful. It’ll grow from there. Took me a long time to see that.”

Broken things are beautiful. More beautiful in the end than perfect things, which are usually an illusion of some sort. I hoped I had given her a beautiful life.

I just—I hoped I was still normal. Was it possible for me to still be normal?

only love will fill the black hole—that it’s the only thing worth chasing.”