The Ladies of the Secret Circus

by Constance Sayers

“I was someone who had to grow into love. Not that I had to grow to love you. I always loved you, but I didn’t know how to love you, so what you got was the equivalent of an attempt at a work of art from someone who didn’t know how to draw. I said the words, but we both know often they were hollow. At times it was the very absence of you that shaped me. But that’s what it is, isn’t it? Both the presence and the absence of a person. The sum of it all. As a result, I feel it more deeply now. Love. My love for you.”

You said I didn’t know what I wanted, That I didn’t know about love.

“Thinking and wanting are not the same thing, my clever poppet. Wanting comes from your heart, not your head.”

What we do isn’t a performance—what they see each night is not some dream of Hell. It is Hell.

It was luck that we are even here. Every day of happiness that we have was more than we were designed for.