Biography of X

by Catherine Lacey

“She won’t always be alive, you know.” I did not believe myself to be such a fool, but I was, of course, that most mundane fool who feels that though everyone on earth, without exception, will die, the woman she loves simply cannot, will never.

I must have believed love was something that arrived in your life and told you what to do with it.

Perhaps I never admired him in the way he wanted to be admired, and perhaps he never seemed to pay close enough attention to me, was always missing crucial details. And these failures—my failure to celebrate him and his failure to comprehend me—led us to wander, to look for comprehension and celebration elsewhere.

Like many other women at that age and time, I harbored a swelling anger that I did not know how to express, as if a new organ had grown inside me but had not yet begun to function.

It makes no sense to grieve years.