Heart the Lover

by Lily King

I’ve noticed that about people who had stable childhoods. They like to create their own problems.

‘There’s nothing honest about the degradation of women. It’s a power move and it’s been working for a few millennia.’ She’s a better feminist than I am.

But I’m not good at saying that I feel hurt or forgotten or rejected. There had been no room for that growing up. I’m more skilled at burying those emotions.

absence feels like losing a lung.

I couldn’t trust you again with my heart.

‘Isn’t love a form of hope?’ I said. ‘No. Love is crushing. Love is something you let yourself feel at your own peril, despite your better sense.’ She

Love is not the weakness. People get in its way. People are weak and perilous, not love.’

‘You know how you can remember exactly when and where you read certain books? A great novel, a truly great one, not only captures a particular fictional experience, it alters and intensifies the way you experience your own life while you’re reading it. And it preserves it, like a time capsule.’

Yash’s mother perches on the edge of the chair Sam was sitting in. She’s so small and brittle now. Pain turns women into birds, I think. I don’t want to turn into a bird in a hospital hallway.

‘I think we desire unity because we have felt it before and we want to feel it again. It’s our natural state.’