Cackle

by Rachel Harrison

“Yeah,” she says, and pauses to aggressively suck the remaining juice from her lime wedge. “But that’s how all romance movies start. You’re going to move to this, like, small-ass town and meet some brooding lumberjack, and he’s going to be named Lucien and have a six-pack even though he’s a low-key alcoholic. He’ll live in a trailer and have a tragic past. It’ll be great.”

I’m shy to begin with. I prefer the couch. I prefer familiarity.

Whenever I’m let down by reality, I’m simultaneously shocked and embarrassed by my lack of ability to anticipate the completely predictable outcome.

I’d forgotten the difference between choosing not to participate and being excluded.

“you’ll discover for yourself soon enough the things that devastate us most in the moment are always the things we look back on with such gratitude.”

“It’s just a random cemetery?” I ask. She sighs. “The earth is a giant cemetery,” she says. “Not to be morbid, but it’s true.” “Right.”

“Sex is easy,” she says. “I, personally, find I can do it better myself. But I understand wanting it from someone else.”

“Fate is just another invention to trick us into complacency. Inaction. If one assumes that they cannot change their circumstances, they won’t try.

I open my mouth to speak words of affirmation like You can do this! or something along those lines, but what comes out is “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!”

It’s astonishing what you’ll accept when you want love. When you need it. You’ll welcome it in any form, from anyone, anything, regardless of circumstance, however peculiar. However fantastical.

I never realized how much bullshit is bound to the bottom of your hair. How it carries with it the years and experiences, all it has witnessed, has endured. The reason you can’t let go of your past is that it’s still attached. That weight on your shoulders, the strain on your back and neck. It’s your dead ends.

I wonder how much of a woman’s life is spent this way. Enduring. Waiting for enjoyment or, fuck it, death.

It’s best not to be specific with wishes. Otherwise, you end up getting what you think you want instead of what you really need. How dangerous.