How to Be Eaten

by Maria Adelmann

I had claimed I was bearing witness, but I’d been a rubbernecker just like everyone else.

That’s the other side of misfortune: the power you wield. The least you can get out of a bad day is a good story, something people can really sink their teeth into.

To want is to be bewitched, I’ve long thought. If it’s beautiful or sweet, it will ruin you.

You know how much capital beautiful people hold in the narrative economy?

I thought about the phrase “better half,” as if it took another person to make you whole, but both of my halves were inside of me. One followed the path of least resistance; the other rebelled.

You can’t change the past, but it’s infinitely reframeable. You can tell the same story over and over a hundred different ways, and every version is a little right and every version is a little wrong.