The Return

by Rachel Harrison

I’m too much of a coward to call down and complain. I’ll wait until I’m spitting mad to do anything about it, and even then, I’ll work myself up to be firm and end up polite.

Same

My problems aren’t invalid. Not to me. Just because they aren’t life altering, life-threatening, doesn’t mean they don’t make me feel bad. I wake up with them every morning, carry them around all day like a lead backpack, and I fall asleep with them at night. They’re real, and they’re mine. I know I’m lucky. I know that. But it doesn’t change how I feel.

“I make a lot of mistakes, Molly. I have in the past, and I will in the future. Will you love me anyway?”

“I’m not leaving without Julie,” I say, and when I hear it, I know it’s true. Despite everything, I can’t leave her. I just can’t.

Would you still love me if I was a wendigo

In her final moments, she decided she wanted to think of her happiest memory. She found it easy. “The last thing I saw,” she says, smiling, “was your face.”

There are many reasons why bad things happen to young women, and at the same time, no reason at all.

“You’ve been kept alive all this time on spite.”

Same

But friendships are mercurial. They’re shape-shifters. I’ve learned to allow them to fluctuate and take new forms. I love my friends; that’s all that matters.

That’s what intimacy is, I think. That’s love. Knowing the smell of someone else’s head.

To be loved is to be known