Salt Slow

by Julia Armfield

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

They are translucent, almost spectral, as though the sea has exorcised its ghosts.

In the morning, I told the woman messaging me on the dating site that I couldn’t talk to her just yet; I was sweeping the bones of a girl I had loved off the kitchen floor.