We Are Here to Hurt Each Other

by Paula D. Ashe

At some point, you’ll start to “unrecognize,” yourself. You

oooo...this is eerie. I'm sure we've all been there at least once, but it doesn't typically spiral the way it does in this book.

Should have been born male.

You're speaking to my soul with this. Ugh. What a time to be alive...

The room shook and my muscles seized. They remembered something I did not.

What must that moment of discovery have felt like? First, embarrassment and anger, the timber of both dependent upon the severity of the fall. Then, a cold curiosity. Standing up, seeing the weird inertia of a limp limb, reaching out to move the vegetation. That mirrored moment of recognition: that is a human. Then, the blissful bite of revelation: that is a human undone.

He unburdened the second girl of her eyes;

What a beautiful way of saying something horrible.

We are here to hurt each other. Again, and again, and again, in perpetuity.

Some nights she will sing in a language that blackens her lips, teeth, and tongue.

We talk. With each word we blacken the sky.

His stories are storms.