Great Circle

by Maggie Shipstead

Closure doesn’t really exist, though. That’s why we’re always looking for it.

I’d like to think I will remember this particular moon, seen from the particular angle of this balcony on this night, but if I forget, I will never know that I’ve forgotten, as is the nature of forgetting. I’ve forgotten so much—almost all I’ve seen. Experience washes over us in great waves. Memory is a drop caught in a flask, concentrated and briny, nothing like the fresh abundance from which it came.

You push on men and eventually you get to the bedrock of it all, which is that they think they’re better than us. And they’re the ones who made this war. I’ve been thinking about that. We get angry and nothing happens. Men get angry, and the whole world burns up.