Notes on an Execution

by Danya Kukafka

The first time you hurt someone, you were eleven years old, and you did not know the difference between pain and wanting.

she thought how sad it was that a single bad thing could turn you into a story, a matter to be whispered about.

thing about being a woman. It was hardwired, ageless, the part that knew you could have the good without the hurt, but it wouldn’t be nearly as exquisite.

It’s okay to feel things, she liked to say with a laugh, and this always irritated you. But if you could go back now, you would clap your hands over hers, relish in the knobby warmth of Jenny’s fingers—the only person who dared to stand between the world and yourself. Please, you would beg. I’ll feel anything. Just show me how.

Saffy had spent her life so steeped in this examination of pain, what it meant, why it persisted. She had spent her years chasing pointless violence, if only to prove it could not touch her. What a waste this hunt had been. What a disappointment. She had finally solved this epic mystery—touched the place where Ansel’s hurt had congealed—only to find his pain looked just like everyone else’s. The difference lay in what he chose to do with it.

You don’t need to have it all. You only need to figure out how much is enough.

The tragedy is that she is dead, but the tragedy is also that she belongs to him. The bad man, who did the bad thing. There are millions of other moments Izzy has lived, but he has eaten them up one by one, until she exists in most memories as a summation of that awful second, distilled constantly in her fear, her pain, the brutal fact.