Ghost Wall

by Sarah Moss

Without a house, it occurred to me, it is much harder to restrict a person’s movement. Harder for a man to restrain a woman.

Why not, after all, make ceremony for the animal dead, for those we have deliberately killed. There is still a dying.

Lie down, she said, I’ll be on the outside, you’ll know I’m between you and everything else, and then she curled around me, her bare legs cradling mine, her fingers at rest on my belly, her breathing warm on my shoulder, and I lay watching the full moon and then the dawn through the ivy-framed window of Trudi’s cottage the rest of that short summer night.