A Separation

by Katie Kitamura

In childhood, words are weightless—I shout I hate you and it means nothing, the same can be said for I love you—but as an adult, those very words are used with greater care, they no longer slip out of the mouth with the same ease.

Every romance requires a backdrop and an audience, even—or perhaps especially—the genuine ones, romance is not something that a couple can be expected to conjure by themselves, you and another, the two of you together, not just once but again and again, love in general is fortified by its context, nourished by the gaze of others.

It was a terrible thing, to love and not know whether you were loved in return, it led to the worst sensations—jealousy, rage, self-loathing—to all these lesser states.

What does she hope for? he repeated. To get married, to have children, to live in a nice house. His voice was irritated. This was impossible, no woman had so limited an imagination, Maria would be no exception.

This was the process by which two lives were disentangled, eventually the dread and discomfort would fade and be replaced by unbroken indifference, I would see him in the street by chance, and it would be like seeing an old photograph of yourself: you recognize the image but are unable to remember quite what it was to be that person.

I suppose the living will always feel this way, Mark said, everything you do is a betrayal.

One of the problems of happiness—and I’d been very happy, when Christopher and I were first engaged—is that it makes you both smug and unimaginative.

When someone you love dies an unnatural death it is natural to look for a larger narrative, a greater significance, the shock of the event seems to require it. But in the end this is only chasing shadows.

perhaps wife and husband and marriage itself are only words that conceal much more unstable realities, more turbulent than can be contained in a handful of syllables, or any amount of writing.