Severance

by Ling Ma

It made me wistful for the illusion of New York more than for its actuality,

Killing is more an accumulative effect rather than the result of one definitive action.

Now I felt myself rescinding, emptying of all personality, emotion, and preferences, so that he would know as little of me as possible.

My private grievances were all over my face.

When other people are happy, I don’t have to worry about them. There is room for my happiness.

Nowhere else was there such an elaborate gradient between the real and the fake.

They were performing their Americanness, perfecting it to a gleaming hard veneer to shield over their Chinese inner selves.

To despise someone is intimate by default.