Salt Slow

by Julia Armfield

In the spaces between mass and classes, we talk long, indulgent circles of self-hatred. It is Girl Language—a cozy bonding rite. We are all convinced we are too fat, too short, too ugly; competing for each title with Olympic fervor, every grievance made to top what came before.

cities could not be lived in but only haunted, that we would simply become two more ghosts in a place where ghosts already abound.

almost welcoming the bleakness in exchange for the notion of escape.

Sleeping gave me time off from myself—a delicious sort of respite. Without it I grow overfamiliar, sticky with self-contempt.

She’d write it anonymously, she said. It wasn’t something she wanted to own.

My father said a town was only as interesting as its bad apples and only as safe as its lunatics.

The house opened around her the way you crack a chest cavity,

From a purely physical perspective, it is hard to love a man without breaking him apart.

She has always considered herself the kind of person seen to best effect at 4 p.m., once the day has burnt away and softened up her difficulties. Having someone with her from the outset gives her no rehearsal space, no time to sink down into some more pliable version of the creature she is to begin with.