Milk Blood Heat

I sat among them, enraptured by their stories, realizing for the first time that every one of us was a link stretching back, mother to daughter to mother, in an unbroken chain from the center of time, connected by milk and blood.

Love requires a bareness, a certain pliability, and I didn't thrill at the possibility of being transformed or wiped away.

Billie wanted to ask if motherhood was always that way- waiting for rest to find you, for parts of yourself to come back together.

She wishes she could ask her parents if it’s better to be a sinner or a prisoner, but she knows that her mother is afraid of truth and her father wouldn’t recognize it, even if it invited him inside, offered fresh fruit.

Sometimes you must consume the damaged body, digest it cell by cell, to taste the new beginning.

She was thinking a million things, some of which had plagued her even before she'd found out: What if the state floods; we reelect that terrible man; if I'm bad at it; I do it and then I decide I don't want to do it; if I don't do it and miss it; what if someone shoots me in the grocery store, the movie theater, my own home; what about the revisionist histories taught in schools; what if I'm not self-sacrificing enough; if I'm too self-sacrificing; if me and Liam get divorced, shit happens; what if the kid hates me; if I'm cruel; if I really really love it and lose it; if none of this can be sustained, not our love or our planet? What if, in the end, we just dye the ocean and wish it well? For better or worse, she didn't know if it was responsible to bring new life into this world, but she couldn't spend all her time agonizing. She had to keep moving, keep breathing, or else she'd cease to exist, so she gave Pia the simplest of answers, what it could all boil down to: 'Honestly? What will this baby do to me?

Frankie wonders if she means it, if this near-universal disdain a daughter can feel for a mother might be necessary for the appreciation that comes later, if this is what it takes to love.

You learn to be who you are, or you die as someone else. It’s simple.

It dawns on Margot that, old as she is, it’s her mother’s first time on this earth, too.

Margot waits outside for her mother, watching the evening disperse in bold orange and pink, a shawl of purple creeping at the edges of the sky. She's eaten, but feels an emptiness she won't learn to recognize until later as the expansion of herself--a good thing, but easy to mistake.

I haven’t had a serious relationship since before our father got sick. And even then, I didn’t like to lay myself out that way. Love requires a bareness, a certain pliability, and I didn’t thrill at the possibility of being transformed or wiped away.

Hate, he continues, is almost always a cover for some perceived psychological threat—our guilt or pain. Our fear.

She vomited casually into the toilet…

Three days ago the doctor had put her at six weeks and no one knew except Liam and her best friend Pia. Maybe the dog.

Billie assumed not—it was her understanding that people tried to imagine as little as possible about other people’s lives unless it suited them.

Older gentlemen sat at tables in dim corners sipping rye whiskey, talking with other men about matters only other men would understand; some kept their hands high on the thighs of women who were not their wives—girls, really—who did not yet keep house and so still had inexact ideas about how the world worked and all of the ways in which they could be disappointed. The girls possessed a malleability, a willingness to be impressed, their cheeks, soft and new, flushing at even the most trivial compliments. These were sweet, bygone qualities the men wished to bottle and harbor for themselves.

They were scared of her, Zey tells the teacher, realizing it as she speaks, and he jabs a finger in her direction. Yes! Exactly that, he says. Now he’s getting excited, pacing before their desks, and Zey tilts forward in her seat, angling closer to his truth. Hate, he continues, is almost always a cover for some perceived psychological threat—our guilt or pain. Our fear. And how do we treat things of which we are afraid?

From here, her mother looks young—could be any of the girls, making sure the face she’s wearing is the one the world wants—and at this thought, Frankie suddenly breaks through, not just a mother, but a whole person. Separate and full of awe. It dawns on Margot that, old as she is, it’s her mother’s first time on this earth, too. Against her will, she softens.

From here, her mother looks young — could be any of the girls, making sure the face she’s wearing is the one the world wants — and at this thought, Frankie suddenly breaks through, not just a mother, but a whole person. Separate and full of awe. It dawns on Margot that, old as she is, it’s her mother’s first time on this earth, too. Against her will, she softens.

Ava stomps and snarls in the shallows; she’s still wearing her low-tops, her socks full of pond, water squishing between her toes. She is Frankenstein’s monster. She is a vampire queen. She is newly thirteen. hollowed out and filled back up with venom and dust-cloud dreams. She throws her head back and howls and howls at the sun, pretending it’s a strange, burning moon, and that there is no other world than this one where she and Kiera are.