Ann Goldstein

When you haven’t been in the world long, it’s hard to comprehend what disasters are at the origin of a sense of disaster: maybe you don’t even feel the need to.

But in a confused way I felt that if I ran away with the others I would leave with her something of mine that she would never give back

Up or down, it seemed to us that we were always going toward something terrible that had existed before us yet had always been waiting for us, just for us

Children don’t know the meaning of yesterday, of the day before yesterday, or even of tomorrow, everything is this, now: the street is this, the doorway is this, the stairs are this, this is Mamma, this is Papa, this is the day, this the night

But I did it without conviction: I did many things in my life without conviction; I always felt slightly detached from my own actions

Who knew how my mother was. Whether she’d started eating again

but only in the parts exposed during work or play outside

Vincenzo had a permanent map of the sun’s bites engraved on his back

We’d gotten our periods a week apart, and even the eruption of pimples seemed synchronized

Who would take out her baby teeth when I returned to the city