Salt Slow

by Julia Armfield

I had found that people seemed to speak more freely in the nighttime—a strange release of inhibitions that came with talking in the dark.

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

“THERE IS A level of insult I cannot overlook,” Miriam announced, “in the way that men behave toward women.”