Notes on an Execution

by Danya Kukafka

Your mother is the part of the Theory you have not yet figured out. We are all bad, and we are all good, and no one should be condemned to one or the other. But if good can be tainted with the bad that comes after, then where do you place it? How do you count it? How much is it really worth?

how sad it was that a single bad thing could turn you into a story, a matter to be whispered about.

We are created by what has happened to us, combined with who we choose to be.

The universe did not care how you loved. You could love like this—urgent and slippery, like a girlfriend, or a wife. You could love like a sister, or even a twin. It didn’t matter. Two connected things must always come apart.

Joy is a cousin of love, you read once. If you cannot feel love, there is at least this weaker relative, tantalizing in memory: the relish of meat, perfectly cooked, melting on the tongue. You know how to swallow, to close your eyes and delight.

She glimpsed that same craving in Jenny Fisk—an ask, for suffering. It was the scariest thing about being a woman. It was hardwired, ageless, the part that knew you could have the good without the hurt, but it wouldn’t be nearly as exquisite.

It is a comfort to know that once, you were little enough to be cradled. Once, there was only wheatgrass and wonder, the earth turning ordinary beneath the train of your spine.