What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

by Helen Oyeyemi

A house of stone and glass and iron should be stark and sober, a watchtower from which a benevolent guard is kept over society. But the white stone of this particular house rippled as if reacting to a hand that had found its most pleasurable point of contact.

It was the usual struggle between one who loves by accepting burdens and one who loves by refusing to be one.

Ed was working on a piece about hierarchies of knowledge for female love interests in the early issues of her favourite comic books; how very odd it must be to operate within a story where you’re capable, courageous, droll, at the top of your field professionally and yet somehow still not permitted the brains to perceive that the man you see or work with every day is exactly the same person as the superhero who saves your life at night. ‘Seems like someone behind the scenes clinging to the idea that the woman whose attention you can’t get just can’t see “the real you”, no?’