Notes on an Execution

by Danya Kukafka

Lavender could picture Cheryl’s apartment, a sudden vision in perfect clarity: high ceilings, gilded windows, art all over the walls. Everything would be vivid and intentional. A modern sofa, a refurbished oak table, trinkets from foreign countries displayed next to first-edition poetry books. The kind of alternate, moneyed life Lavender sometimes imagined for herself—a fantasy in which things had been different from the start.

Over the years, Lavender had learned many different ways to love. There was the love of a friend, good conversation late at night. The love of a party, whiskey in the moonlight. The love of sex, tinged magenta—for a few years, there had been a woman named Joy. And Lavender had finally learned how to love the stretch of her own limbs, first thing in the morning.

That was the great power of Jenny: not love at first sight, but some kind of un-haunting.

She had known from a young age that everyone had darkness inside—some just controlled it better than others. Very few people believed that they were bad, and this was the scariest part. Human nature could be so hideous, but it persisted in this ugliness by insisting it was good.

the difference between good and evil was simply a matter of trying.

Love, she had been told, was both thrilling and noxious, an addictive threat that defied all logic—love was footsteps on the bottom stair, a pair of hands at the base of her throat. But love did not have to be tainted with hurt. She thought of Kristen and her kids, splashing in the backyard pool, singing along to some pop song Saffy didn’t know. She thought of Corinne and her wife, hands clasped proudly at the station’s Christmas party. 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.