Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance

by Alison Espach

But I didn’t want to set the table. I didn’t want to be civilized. Civilization, I was learning, was not all it was cracked up to be. “Man’s attempt to be civilized,” Mr. Klein had said, “has produced more massacres, holocausts, and genocides than any barbarians ever did.” This upset a lot of the kids at school—especially Valerie. Valerie didn’t like to hear that simply by sitting there, wearing the shoes and the shirts and the socks that she was wearing, she was oppressing children in Indonesia. Valerie was like, “I’m just, like, sitting here. I’m not doing anything. I didn’t even buy these sneakers. If you want to point fingers at the oppressor, point them at my mother. She’s the one who buys this stuff for me.”

Lmao i love the way she writes these terrible situations