Notes on an Execution

by Danya Kukafka

She knew that love could swaddle you tight, and also bruise.

The feeling hit Lavender just in time: a love so consuming, it felt more like panic. The sensation was followed immediately by a nauseous, tidal guilt. Because Lavender knew, from the second she saw the baby, that she did not want this kind of love. It was too much. Too hungry. But it had been growing inside her all these months, and now it had fingers, toes. It was gulping oxygen.

Just you wait, honey. Men are wolves, and some wolves are patient.

She cried for the things she had wanted, which she couldn’t even picture anymore. It was like she’d held her own desire too long in the palm of her hand and it was now just an object, devoid of meaning, useless and taking up space.

There was a fact about life that Saffy hated, then: how it took the bad things and settled them inside you. It didn’t matter that you were a person, and it didn’t matter what you wanted. The bad lived insistently in your blood, a part of you always, calling out like a magnet to the horror of the world.

When Ansel smiled, the grin spread across his face, like a runny egg cracked open.

So you’re a manifesto guy, huh? It’s not a manifesto, you said. Show me one and I’ve seen them all, the warden said. They all look like this. Like justification. There is no justification for what you’ve done, Ansel P, but God knows you’ve got the time to keep searching.

That old, fluttering fear. Its wings, beating frantic.

She wanted to be good, whatever that meant. As Saffy gazed up at the ceiling, hot tears burning down her cheeks, she prayed that the difference between good and evil was simply a matter of trying.

Forgiveness is flimsy. Forgiveness is like a square of warm sun on the carpet. You’d like to curl up in it, feel its temporary comfort—but forgiveness will not change you. Forgiveness will not bring you back.

Grief was a hole. A portal to nothing. Grief was a walk so long Hazel forgot her own legs. It was a shock of blinding sun. A burst of remembering: sandals on pavement, a sleepy back seat, nails painted on the bathroom floor. Grief was a loneliness that felt like a planet.

Give yourself a moment every day, Harmony had suggested once in group therapy. A single moment in which you are absolved of all responsibility. How much responsibility could a person hold, Lavender wondered. How much, before the overflow?

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