Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance

by Alison Espach

I did not want to be stupid. I wanted to know everything you knew. So I considered the possibility that you were right—that anything was possible. That this was America, where some women had two vaginas and were proud of it.

Her father, she told me, was a scientist who made the chemical that made white bread even softer.

My father, the creator of the toaster strudel,

You were too old to love forts—you were sixteen, a girl with a learner’s permit and a boyfriend now. But I didn’t remind you of this, because that was the fun of being sisters. Sometimes, you got to be younger than you were, and I got to be older.

“I told her I didn’t think it was a good idea to be hanging up pictures of yachts when her clients were probably depressed people who were never on yachts.”

The vegetarian who doesn’t eat meat not because he cares about animals, but because of inflammation? That’s what Peter said at dinner. He said it wasn’t because he cared about animals.

Me asf