Paradise Rot

by Jenny Hval

Plus a whole lot of weirdness.

I studied literature a few years ago, and now I only read trash.

‘In a way we are,’ I answered, ‘in that weird house with those paper-thin walls. Sometimes I’m not sure what’s going on.’

But the apple was first, and it never stops rotting, it just gets blacker. The apple has no end, just like this fairy tale.’

From the roof, from the walls, from all corners, I can hear the sap dripping with its silver-shimmer echo, and I think that it drips with us, for us, from us, and that I have to leave.

The other is still there, with the other ghosts in the house, shut in while the storm and the sea tears at the walls outside.