Pink Slime

Se esforzaba por sobrevivir a la maternidad, ese campo minado que no te permitía ningún movimiento sin el riesgo de hacerte volar en pedazos.

The beginning is never the beginning. What we often mistake for the beginning is just the moment we realise something has changed.

The epidemic had given us back what we’d thought was lost forever: a country of readers buried away far from the sea, the wealthy in their hilltop estates or mansions, the poor overflowing the small cities we used to mock for being empty, lacking, dim.

yo no me voy a morir por ningún fenómeno. Yo me voy a morir porque quiero.

Not long ago, we could barely spend five minutes together. Her double-edged questions, her benevolent campaigns to control my life. You can’t wish so intensely for someone else’s well-being. It’s monstrous; aggressive, even.

My mother used to say: the labyrinths you build for yourself have no exit.

Memory is a broken urn: a thousand shards and fragments of dried mud. What parts of you remain intact? You slip in the mud, lose your balance. And it had been such a delicate balance, one you’d tried so hard to keep, only to fall flat on your ass.

You’re right about that. This one’s so sensible she’s deadly. And believe me when I say it, I’ve known her since I was five.

It wasn’t an appeal, but rather the verbal expression of a weariness so complete it extended beyond my body, beyond my physical and mental existence; an exhaustion embedded in time itself.

There you go again, aggressive and irritable. You won’t go far like that.’ ‘I don’t want to go anywhere.

The night had done nothing to ease my exhaustion, which I felt as soon as I tried to move: a force of gravity pulling me down into the mattress. I could have shattered into so many pieces no one would’ve been able to put me back together.

I cannot stop a future that has already arrived.

I had suddenly lost the right to risk my life.

He remained transfixed by his game, cocooned in a space I couldn't enter. Years of life and mistrust separated me from that realm where everything was possible, from those fantasies that made the world a better, kinder place.

I didn't want to get involved, didn't want to think about anything other than myself; I wanted to rest for a while inside my privilege.

Such a difficult balance to strike: motherhood was a real minefield, any false step might blow you to pieces.

We'd always pretended to be older than we were. We wanted to speed up time, become adults, because we thought that life began then, that what we were living was just practice.

Max and my mother were enemies at war over a miniscule territory.

You can't wish so intensely for someone else's well-being. It's monstrous; aggressive, even.

You’re the wrapping,’ he said, ‘but something else lies beneath. That face. A girl disguised as a monster.’ ‘Or a monster disguised as a girl?’ ‘Does it matter?’ he asked. ‘It matters to me.’ ‘The monster and the girl were one.

She didn’t need to be judge and jury with me; I imposed my punishments on myself.

I go back, sometimes. In your mind, you mean? Something like that. The mind is a dangerous place.

Are you asking my permission? No. What, then? I saw you the other day. Where? In a dream.

The water barely made a sound as it lapped against the seawall. The air was completely still. How long could this calm last? Every war had its ceasefires, even this one we fought unarmed.

Resignation is not a virtue,’ she said. ‘You have to fight for what you want.