All This Could Be Different

by Sarah Thankam Mathews

But nobody consoles you after a rupture with a beloved friend. There are few movies ideal for watching while your tears salt pints of ice cream, no articles in women’s magazines that you can skim at the hairdresser’s. You have only the ache. No script to accompany it. No ritual to give it shape.

Years later I can look back on that moment and see it as the act of devotion it was, to pick up somebody’s disgusting mess and dispense with it.

It doesn’t do to dwell in fantasy, even if your only fantasy is that you end up a normal boring person: wedded, safe, loving, loved.