Breasts and Eggs

by Mieko Kawakami

If you want to know how poor somebody was growing up, ask them how many windows they had. Don’t ask what was in their fridge or in their closet. The number of windows says it all. It says everything. If they had none, or maybe one or two, that’s all you need to know.

Could all of them look each other in the eye and say they really, truly knew each other?

yeah—

Can you imagine searching for someone special, someone irreplaceable, a parent or someone else—with nothing to rely on but a few features that were little more than incidental details? The thought of it made my chest go tight.

yeah it's kinda— sad. looking for an aswers when you don't have the full question, will he ever find it?

Is this what it means to live and die alone? That you’ll always be in the same place, no matter where you are?

I felt like I’d been left behind, trapped inside the weathered skeleton of an enormous creature that had shed its flesh and skin.

We had no money. We had nothing. But we had each other. We had our words, and all the feelings that we never even thought of putting into words.

What, exactly, qualifies as a ‘real’ family? Or a ‘real’ home? If the world is full of these ‘real’ families, why all the abuse? Why do some parents murder their own children?”

She never wanted to leave. She never wanted to fight.

Why am I alive? Why do I have to go on living?

It was a new year, but the first month was the same old thing.

There was always someone somewhere discovering a different life, a different experience than the day before, stepping off into uncharted territory. But I wasn’t getting anywhere. I couldn’t move; in fact, I was being pulled away, slipping further every second from the blinding light of that reality.

I want to meet my child and live with them. But who is it I want to meet? We’ve never met before.

‘What’s a father, anyway?’

‘You’re mine. I carried you for nine months. That’s where you came from. That’s all there is to it. What else matters?’”

yeah this kinda :((

For as long as she could remember, home was a place where she had to walk on eggshells.

It’s just, men can be such idiots.

At some point, it finally hit me. Why am I wasting my precious time getting angry over all his stupid shit? So I put an end to it.”

Without love and trust, resentment is the only thing that’s left. And that’s where we found ourselves, real fast.”