Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch

by Rivka Galchen

I’m not much good at begging. I’m too proud. Or is it that I’m not proud enough?

Do you understand that any false testimony you knowingly give will provoke God’s great anger in your earthly life and will deliver your soul unto Satan upon your death?

I thought the times were not difficult enough, since people still made time for telling lies.

she looked different. I hardly noticed it at first. Yet it was as if my liver or kidneys noticed, while the rest of my body went about its business as per usual.

Do you understand that any false testimony you knowingly give will provoke God’s great anger in your earthly life and will deliver your soul unto Satan upon your death?

Being alive at my age is like being woken from a grave and walking the earth to see the alien world of my descendants.

for some reason, this day I saw that I was walking to the end of my life, and they were walking into their bloom. They were walking toward the center of their lives, and I was walking toward my own perimeter. I’m not usually detained by fanciful nonsense like that. It was a curious angle of the sun, of late light.

I firmly believe that the life of a spinster is often better than that of a married woman. No dying in childbirth. No beast in the house.

Johannes did have worldly power, but his power was like smoke—any strong wind would disperse it.