Peaces

by Helen Oyeyemi

I many times thought peace had come, When peace was far away; As wrecked men deem they sight the land At centre of the sea, And struggle slacker, but to prove, As hopelessly as I, How many the fictitious shores Before the harbor lie. —Emily Dickinson

You run the romantic gauntlet for decades without knowing who exactly it is you’re giving and taking such a battering in order to reach. You run the gauntlet without knowing whether the person whose favour you seek will even be there once you somehow put that path strewn with sensory confetti and emotional gore behind you. And then, by some stroke of fortune, the gauntlet concludes, the person does exist after all, and you become that perpetually astonished lover from so many of the songs you used to find endlessly disingenuous.

Each carriage door was sealed with a symbol. A dagger, a bumblebee, a spinning wheel, a harp.

I’d like to know what it is that makes that disbelief so rigid. The one concerning women who live by themselves, I mean. Even though I know several, and even though I understand that for five out of seven of the female loners I know, it’s truly their choice, the next female loner I meet never benefits from these other friendships I share, because at the moment our paths cross I instantly revert to Oh God, what ails this person??

was very important for mongooses to travel before they reach middle age: “Otherwise they get narrow-minded.”

I’m sure almost no one deludes themselves that all their ancestors were decent. Pick a vein, any vein: mud mixed with lightning flows through, an unruly fusion of bad blood and good.

I was a bit shaken by the case of the Bombay mongoose. Not even Coke . . . Pepsi. The preferred beverage of souls damaged beyond repair.

I suppose carers can all too easily become captors, and with the best intentions in the world, we’d become just that.

You have a better time when you’re not expecting anything real. That’s why seriously tacky people manage to enjoy themselves wherever they are.”

Don’t worry, baby . . . I never have anything up my sleeve except for the utterly fraudulent authority with which I assure you—yes, you—that you’ll get through this, whatever it is, and everything will be better. We both know nothing’s all right, but when I tell you it will be, you take it. If you don’t, it’s because you’re holding out for another outcome altogether.

Realism. What a gift! Most of the time it’s as if my life is hiding from me, but as I play, note by note, I echolocate it.