Sarah Lee, 2022
The Wall
Watching the curve of the long line of your back,
desiring, I said in my mind that each of us is alone forever, forever. We live with this.
William Bronk
I walk out of Sarah’s bathroom holding a copy of Valerie Solana’s Scum Manifesto that I found in there.
Can I borrow this? I’ve never read it in its entirety.
Sure, she says, but you should also read this. She hands me an English translation of Michel Houellebecq’s The Elementary Particles. I’ve only ever read Houellebecq in his original French and I was never a huge fan of his writing to begin with, but when she describes it as the bleakest book she’s ever read, I know that this is the book I need right now, the perfect spring read.
You can ask all the questions you want but sometimes there are no answers. Sometimes the answer is too ugly to speak. There is no such thing as closure, but I find some sick comfort, sitting on my balcony, reading about what makes men wrong, the accumulation of pain, and what it crescendos into.
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