Elsewhere

by Alexis Schaitkin

This was how life elsewhere worked upon people. They accumulated years rather purposelessly, so that as they aged they did not unearth their deepest, truest selves but, on the contrary, grew increasingly dispossessed of themselves.

Impossible to predict, what motherhood would bring out of a woman, what it would show her about herself, the end to which it would carry her.

an old woman who was still a child because her life had taught her none of what a mother knows.

But I loved her ferociously. I would chop anyone to bits for her. But what if that was just it? What if it was possible to love too ferociously, and to burn yourself up with it?

they had no need for our careful threesomes, a friend and a spare, in case one should go.