And I Do Not Forgive You: Stories and Other Revenges

by Amber Sparks

Lavoisier’s wife had an internal life, even at three, even at thirteen. Do you believe in it?

It’s always raining now, or always dry now. And all our days are like this now, here at the end of the world. Everything feels like a memory already. Everything feels like it’s happening for the last time.

Later, after you’d opened a few presents and calmed the fuck down under the stockings and strings of rainbow lights, I said, I am totally okay here without paradise. Why can’t you feel the same? Why can’t you be content with the small things we have? Why can’t you just stop your bitching?

hope is the thing with feathers, and I have always been allergic to down.

Stop talking about death, people always say. As if it were taboo. As if it weren’t the Great Leveler. I was trained up to a life of accountancy and account-settling, so how can I not include it in my calculations? WHO DOESN’T LIE AWAKE AT NIGHT AND THINK ABOUT DEATH? I don’t believe it. Death deserves all caps. To deny it is like denying that you eat sandwiches. Everyone eats death.

Could we pretend death is really a sort of starting over? Or is that just too much to ask?

It is this the robots cannot understand. That human love is mostly failure. That failure may be very sad, but it is yours, and you hold on to it if you can.