The Last House on Needless Street

by Catriona Ward

I judge people two ways—on how they treat animals, and on what they like to eat. If their favorite food is some kind of salad, they are definitely a bad person. Anything with cheese, they are probably OK.

The gods are closer than you would think. They live among the trees, behind a skin so thin you could scratch it open with a fingernail.

I think it’s OK for me to say that I am beautiful.

The first thing I hate is called a Russian doll. It holds a smaller version of itself inside it, and another inside that and so on. How awful. They are prisoners. I imagine them all screaming in the dark, unable to move or speak.

Anyway the trick to life is, if you don’t like what is happening, go back to sleep until it stops.

Breaking me, then mending me, over and over—that was my mother.

She feels like a big, dark, empty room.

I am exhausted by the day. Feelings are hard.

Everyone feels like that sometimes. Sometimes things get bad, and you can’t see a future ahead. It’s all cloudy, like the sky on a rainy day. But life moves very fast. Things never stay the same forever, even the bad things. The clouds will blow away. They always do, I promise.”

The young feel pain intensely, I think, because they don’t know yet how deep it can go.

People have eyes to look and ears to listen, and women look and listen more carefully than men.

You are supposed to add lemon juice but people who like lemon juice are the same kind of people who love salad. I won’t have it in the house.

It’s so frightening to have more than one face. How can you know who you really are?

wanted to say—well, hi, and I brought you some pie.” She winces and resists the urge to mention that she’s a poet, but doesn’t know it.

A panic attack, she thinks vaguely. Got to get it together. But it’s like sinking deeper and deeper into a sand dune; she can’t just climb out.

She eats quickly and without pleasure. She can’t care about food, but she takes care of herself. She learned the importance of that the hard way.

The house is dark but she cannot let go of the feeling that it is not at rest. There is something manic in its stillness.

At the sight of him, her vision goes dim at the edges, her palms are oily-slick. The body’s reactions to fear are so similar to that of love.

Love is also hope.

Thoughts are a door that the dead walk through.

There’s something horrible about the thought of an empty room, in the dark.

“In this country, all the people are afraid of death. But death is what we are. It is at the center of things.

People who have lived together for many generations share a special kind of madness.

“When your feelings get too big, you must come to the woods and walk.”

Truth is as slippery as mercury. It always seems to find a way to escape.

How many times can someone bend before they break forever? You have to take care, dealing with broken things; sometimes they give way, and break others in their turn.

He added an attic, which he kept locked. He could put memories and thoughts in there and close the door.

I am very surprised and weirdly shy. We told him so much, the other night. I feel sort of naked.

It is not easy to hold everyone in your heart at once.

It is a recipe, but sometimes it sounds like a spell.