Motherthing

by Ainslie Hogarth

Grown men with no way to communicate anger but screaming and punching walls and capsizing chairs and it would have made you feel the slightest bit bad for them if you didn’t also hate their guts. I guess that’s what rage is: the point where your words fail the power of your emotions.

Could this possibly be real? Can real grief even happen this many times to a single human body?

Your sense of yourself, the thing in you that loves your family and your friends and, you know, experiences joy or even pain, that thing is gone and you’re just left with your walking corpse and it’s just as dreadful as any corpse is, but it’s you. You’re the corpse.

The work of women’s clothes never more important than at the beginning and the end of their lives when it’s tasked with broadcasting, as loudly as possible: please don’t try to have sex with me.