Brutes

by Dizz Tate

“I never loved you,” I said. This was not true, exactly. I loved his body, that soft, familiar sack. How many times had I burrowed into him, wishing only to be smaller, to chisel myself down until, cell-like, I could slip inside him? I did not love the stranger he turned out to be, but I loved the parts of him he had no control over, his bones, the way he moved.

I want to live inside this moment forever, but if I’ve learned anything, it’s that even movement becomes another kind of stillness if you force it to last too long.

We think of our mothers when we love them the most, which is always just after we hate them the most.