Notes on an Execution

by Danya Kukafka

you have always believed that pity is the most offensive of feelings. Pity is destruction wearing a mask of sympathy. Pity strips you bare. Pity shrinks.

This was how it always went, wasn’t it? All those women who’d come before her, in caves and tents and covered wagons. It was a wonder how she’d never given much thought to the ancient, timeless fact. Motherhood was, by nature, a thing you did alone.

Sister love was like food, or air, or memory itself. It was molecular.

reminder, a testament: You are capable of being better. You are capable of living on.

We cannot be whole until we face what has broken us.

Jenny used to say that everything happens for a reason—you always teased her for the cliché. If everything happens for a reason, then what about war? What about cancer, school shootings? Jenny would only shake her head, wise and wistful, so resigned in her faith. There has to be a purpose, she would say. Pointless pain isn’t human instinct. We’ll always find meaning in it. Optimistic, you’d say. It’s not optimism, Jenny would tell you. Just survival.