Why this collective, tacitly-understood expectation that grief for an animal should be brief and relatively tidy?
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The Day I Married a City
It was an unorthodox ceremony to be sure, peculiar and solemn as the girl I was then. I loved New Orleans the way you love a person: passionately, even obsessively. I wanted to gather New Orleans into my arms and kiss her.
Letters from Maggie: An Unlikely Correspondence. Part 6
I met Maggie in person twelve years to the day since I’d left Leo. One of us happened to be in the other one’s city, and we arranged to have hipster coffee at a place with corrugated tin on the walls and succulents on the tables. Neither one of us had ever been there; the … Continue reading Letters from Maggie: An Unlikely Correspondence. Part 6
Letters from Maggie: An Unlikely Correspondence. Part 5
Other women tell me I have a high tolerance for bullshit. I’m not sure if this is good or bad. On one hand, I didn’t do myself any favors by sticking it out with Leo for nine years—unless there’s some super-grande, el-Cosmico design I can't see. I mean, one hopes. And when one hopes, one … Continue reading Letters from Maggie: An Unlikely Correspondence. Part 5
Letters from Maggie: An Unlikely Correspondence. Part 4
Leo loved pornography. Enjoying it alone was his primary sexual outlet. He wasn’t even particularly secretive about this predilection: like I had been, Maggie was expected to simply accept it.
Letters from Maggie: An Unlikely Correspondence. Part 3
Sometimes I am still afraid of Leo, even after all these years. In the early days of my correspondence with Maggie, I often feared she’d do the very thing I’d encouraged: leave him. I worried he’d discover I’d influenced her decision. That he’d find me and punish me. In a way, I’m writing this to … Continue reading Letters from Maggie: An Unlikely Correspondence. Part 3
Letters from Maggie: An Unlikely Correspondence. Part 2
I thought, in some convoluted way, that if I could persuade her to leave sooner than I had done, I was somehow saving the ghost of myself.
