Pure Colour

by Sheila Heti

Here in the first draft of existence, we crafted our own second drafts—stories and books and movies and plays—polishing our stones to show God and each other what we wanted the next draft to be, comforting ourselves with our visions.

It was like a vagina was stretching for a very large cock, but it was in her chest that this stretching was happening, in the part of her that usually kept love out, that firmly preserved her insides.

What

In the world of those early dreams, she understood that the best and only good thing about death was that it was final. That there could be no negotiating with death was its one mercy, its only relief.

She had felt his spirit ejaculate into her, like it was the entire universe coming into her body, then spreading all the way through her, the way cum feels spreading inside, that warm and tangy feeling.

Isä ja tytär. Tää kohta kertoo isästä ja tyttärestä. The fuck.

My basic premise is that in life, you live forever, because as soon as you die, you don’t realize you’re dead, so you’re kind of always alive, so the thing is, you shouldn’t worry about yourself.

To find the right distance from everything in life is the most important thing. To stand at the right distance, like God standing back from the canvas—for you can’t see anything if you’re too up close, and you can’t see anything if you’re too far back.

There is some pride in having been created to make a better world come. There is some pride in being the ones who were made to be thrown out.

And when she took down the painting over the TV, clearing out his house the month after he died, the square of the wall beneath the painting was pulsating slightly in the shape of a heart, like the house really did love her, because of how much her father did, who had sat there facing the wall of his living room, loving her every day of his life.

It is simple to love one’s own creature. But that is a debt the child can never repay—to have been given all that love and care. It feels completely unbalanced.

this present moment will one day be gone, and its troubles buried beneath so many layers of living.