Lily King

But there’s always that one last piece to shove in place, even if it’s the wrong shape entirely.’
They laughed heavily, a sort of deeply sympathetic agreement that was like a salve on my shredded nerves.
‘It always feels like that in the field, doesn’t it?’ Nell said. ‘Then you get back and it all fits.’
‘Does it?’ I said.
‘If you’ve done the work it will.’

? I didn’t want anything to do with women or anthropology at that point.

I’m both the sad person and the person wanting to comfort the sad person. And then I feel sad for that person who has so much compassion because she’s clearly been through the same thing, too. And the cycle keeps repeating. It’s like when you go into a dressing room with a three-paneled mirror and you line them up just right to see the long narrowing hallway of yourselves diminishing into infinity. It feels like that, like I’m sad for an infinite number of my selves.

I’m both the sad person and the person wanting to comfort the sad person. And then I feel sad for that person who has so much compassion because she’s clearly been through the same thing, too. And the cycle keeps repeating. It’s like when you go into a dressing room with a three-paneled mirror and you line them up just right to see the long narrowing hallway of yourselves diminishing into infinity. It feels like that, like I’m sad for an infinite number of my selves.

I look into my eyes, but they aren’t really mine, not the eyes I used to have. They’re the eyes of someone very tired and very sad, and once I see them I feel even sadder and then I see that sadness, that compassion, for the sadness in my eyes, and I see the water rising in them.

It was strong, whatever was between us, thick, like the wet air and the smell of every green thing ready to bloom. Maybe it was just spring. Maybe that’s all it was.

I understood then how guarded I’d been before with men, how little of me I’d let them see.

‘He just blasted me apart. I don’t even know where to find the bolts and screws. I always thought that if ever there came a time when I didn’t hold anything back and just laid my heart on the table—’ I have to squeak out the rest. ‘Which I did. I did that this time. And it still wasn’t enough.’

They say women have intuition, but men can smell a competitor across state lines.

Marriage is the polar opposite of a fairy tale, my mother said.