The Return

by Rachel Harrison

She seems confident in this. I’m sure it’s easier for her to accept if she tells herself it was her choice, that it wasn’t decided for her. That it wasn’t something that happened to her. I can’t blame her for this. I won’t take it from her, even though I don’t believe it. I believe she was taken because she was there. A pretty blonde. Alone in the woods. Lost. There are many reasons why bad things happen to young women, and at the same time, no reason at all.

That’s what intimacy is, I think. That’s love. Knowing the smell of someone else’s head. I get whiffs of it sometimes, randomly. What a funny kind of ghost. A phantom scent.