Notes on an Execution

by Danya Kukafka

No one is all bad. No one is all good. We live as equals in the murky gray between.

Lavender spoke to the redwoods, and sometimes they spoke back. There was a language special for the trees. A whispered understanding. The sound was clearest early in the morning, when the mist curled between rustling leaves and Lavender could still smell the night, lingering smoky in the redwoods’ bark.

Though Lavender did not believe in God, she did believe in time.

You wanted to tell Shawna that she was a cog in a deplorable machine, that prisons are also companies, maximizing profit, staying afloat on a pile of bodies like Big Bear’s. You have been watching the news. You have been reading the paper. It is not your problem, not your concern, but still no coincidence that you are one of only three white men on A-Pod.

He sounds like a freshman philosophy student. Like, he really wants to be smart but he’s maybe not that smart.”

none of his ideas are particularly new or interesting. But I think he’s trying to make meaning, and that’s admirable enough. He’s trying to figure out who he is and how to exist. He’s trying to justify himself. Aren’t we all doing some version of that?”

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.

Grief was a hole. A portal to nothing.

“Do you ever wonder about an alternate universe?” Ansel’s voice cracked, desperate, as the officers tugged him forward. “Another world out there, where we both live different lives? Where maybe we’ve made different choices?” “I wonder all the time,” Saffy said, nearly a whisper. “But there’s only this world, Ansel. Just this one.”

Lavender knew, then, that the world was a forgiving place. That every horror she had lived or caused could be balanced with such gutting kindness. It would be a tragedy, she thought—inhumane—if we were defined only by the things we left behind.

his choices still his own to make.

There would be no story, for these girls alone. There would be no vigil, no attention at all. They are relevant because of Ansel and the fascination the world has for men like him.

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

There are millions of men out there who want to hurt women—people seem to think that Ansel Packer is extraordinary, because he actually did.

In another world, this is a regular evening for Izzy, Angela, Lila, Jenny. But they do not live in that world—and they do not live in this one. * * *

How gentle, this world. How tender, this mercy.