No One Is Talking About This

by Patricia Lockwood

For as long as she read the news, line by line and minute by minute, she had some say in what happened, didn’t she? She had to have some say in what happened, even if it was only WHAT? Even if it was only HEY!

We wanted every last one of those bastards in jail! But more than that, we wanted the carceral state to be abolished, and replaced with one of those islands where a witch turned men to pigs.

She was an instantaneous citizen of the flash of lightning that wrote across the sky I know.

She went silent in the portal; she knew how it was. She knew that as you scrolled you averted your eyes from the ones who could not apply their lipstick within the lines, from the ones who were beginning to edge up into mania, from the ones who were Horny, from the dommes who were not remotely mean enough, from the nudeness that received only eight likes, from the toothpaste on the mirror in bathroom selfies, from the potato salads that looked disgusting, from the journalists who were making mistakes in real time, from the new displays of animal weakness that told us to lengthen the distance between the pack and the stragglers. But above all you averted your eyes from the ones who were in mad grief, whose mouths were open like caves with ancient paintings inside.

Far away now, her sister texted, I think she’s hearing rain for the very first time. The first flake of the snow of everything, now wild and warm. Thursday in the rain; October in the rain; twist of a heavy red apple; word on the tip of the tongue; grain by green glass grain; and all of it until it ran out.