The Roughest Draft

by Emily Wibberley

There’s no truth to these pages, but the trick of fiction is to make you think there is. I let myself fall for it as often as I can.

“how when you’ve had something with someone, it’s easy for . . . an ember to leap into a flame with the slightest change in the wind.”

It’s funny how people can sit side by side, separate whirlwinds each self-contained.

My mind was lighting up—not the lightbulb of neatly inspired ideas. More like a house on fire. I wanted to write.

I wrote with Melissa in mind but also Katrina. Being with her now is proof that you can think you’ve rebuilt, shored your walls, and yet still a person to whom you’ve given too much of yourself is a hurricane who can sweep in with a shared smile over a glass of wine in the early evening.

Some truths are so obvious they don’t need to be said out loud.

What an idiot

feels like fiction—the kind you read with a hand between your legs, not the kind you get to taste on your tongue.

mine to lose.