Her Body and Other Parties

by Carmen Maria Machado

What magical thing could you want so badly they take you away from the known world for wanting it?

I have heard all of the stories about girls like me, and I am unafraid to make more of them.

Brides never fare well in stories. Stories can sense happiness and snuff it out like a candle.

(If you are reading this story out loud, force a listener to reveal a devastating secret, then open the nearest window to the street and scream it as loudly as you are able.)

This baby’s head is bothering me because it’s like a piece of fruit gone bad.

Thank god we cannot make a baby. We made a baby. Here she is.

“I wonder if the bars make the monsters, and not the other way around.”

You fight to put names on all of your dead, but not every victim wants to be known. Not all of us can deal with the illumination that comes with justice.”

They are talking about how we can’t trust the faded women, women who can’t be touched but can stand on the earth, which means they must be lying about something, they must be deceiving us somehow.