Grave Matter

by Karina Halle

“Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others”

“We have a saying here,” she says softly. “Don’t try to change the lodge. Let the lodge change you.”

I wanted to create life—I wanted to revel in it, in the magic of scientific creation that pushed the boundaries and bordered on insanity. I wanted to become so singularly obsessed with something that nothing else around me mattered. I wanted to leave my mark on the world, no matter what it took, even if it took my own mind.

See, boys are allowed to be mad scientists. But when women do it? We’re simply labeled crazy. And even at eight years old, I knew there was a difference.

Grief is funny like that. It lives alongside you, sometimes in silence, and then a random thought, or memory, or smell will punch through you like a fist, your bleeding heart in its grasp, and you have to relive it all over again. I often think of grief as a cycle from which there is no escape, an ouroboros, a snake of sorrow eating its tail.

like inflicting punishment, not taking it.”

JESUS

It’s dangerous when you get what you want.

I’m yours, I’m yours, I’m yours.

But he is my doctor. I am his patient. He is my teacher. I am his student. He says he’s the one keeping me safe. But every moment I’m with him, I feel I’m one step closer to danger.

“Because you are my future, Syd,” he says, his voice low and gruff. “Because that’s all there is. The past doesn’t exist anymore. Only now and tomorrow is what does. And I want you—now and tomorrow.”

And so I follow the dead girl once again.

why

I realize that some connections in life can’t be severed, not even by death.