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e07b838
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My genes, my love, are rubber bands and rope - make yourself a structure you can live inside.
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Aimee Bender |
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db9d7c3
|
Many kids, it seemed, would find out that their parents were flawed, messed-up people later in life, and I didn't appreciate getting to know it all so strong and early.
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Aimee Bender |
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69be977
|
I want to be violated by insight.
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Aimee Bender |
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335a82e
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I give boring people something to discuss over corn.
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sensationalism
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Aimee Bender |
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e0310cd
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We hit the sidewalk, and dropped hands. How I wished, right then, that the whole world was a street.
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Aimee Bender |
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0cd7492
|
Mom loved my brother more. Not that she didn't love me - I felt the wash of her love every day, pouring over me, but it was a different kind, siphoned from a different, and tamer, body of water. I was her darling daughter; Joseph was her it.
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siblings
mother
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Aimee Bender |
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78b7861
|
I could feel the tears beginning to collect in my throat again, but I pushed them apart, away from each other. Tears are only a threat in groups.
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Aimee Bender |
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8f9664f
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Sometimes, she said, mostly to herself, I feel I do not know my children... It was a fleeting statement, one I didn't think she'd hold on to; after all, she had birthed us alone, diapered and fed us, helped us with homework, kissed and hugged us, poured her love into us. That she might not actually know us seemed the humblest thing a mother could admit.
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Aimee Bender |
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c781ba6
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I am the drying meadow; you the unspoken apology; he is the fluctuating distance between mother and son; she is the first gesture that creates a quiet that is full enough to make the baby sleep. My genes, my love, are rubber bands and rope; make yourself a structure you can live inside. Amen.
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Aimee Bender |
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dca2321
|
I was with them for all of it, but more like an echo than a participant.
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Aimee Bender |
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35496f0
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To see someone you love, in a bad setting, is one of the great barometers of gratitude.
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Aimee Bender |
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f68ca4f
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Light is good company, when alone; I took my comfort where I found it, and the warmest yellow bulb in the living-room lamp had become a kind of radiant babysitter all its own.
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Aimee Bender |
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02732cb
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kissing George was a little like rolling in caramel after spending years surviving off rice sticks.
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Aimee Bender |
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ce7420a
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I didn't mind the quiet stretches. It was like we were trying out the idea of being side by side.
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Aimee Bender |
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306647e
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My eyelids are my own private cave, he murmured. That I can go to anytime I want.
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human
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Aimee Bender |
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52904de
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That's the thing with handmade items. They still have the person's mark on them, and when you hold them, you feel less alone.
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color-master
handmade
alone
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Aimee Bender |
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6c4c27c
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Several of the girls at the party had had sex, something which sounded appealing but only if it could happen with blindfolds in a time warp plus amnesia
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sex
high-school
girls
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Aimee Bender |
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ed7a87e
|
It was like we were exchanging codes, on how to be a father and a daughter, like we'd read about it in a manual, translated from another language, and were doing our best with what we could understand.
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relationships
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Aimee Bender |
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63287aa
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It is so often surprising, who rescues you at your lowest moments.
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color-master
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Aimee Bender |
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4168f7b
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It seemed to happen in springs, the revealing of things.
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Aimee Bender |
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877654c
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a Dorito asks nothing of you, which is its great gift. It only asks that you are not there.
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Aimee Bender |
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ee4e203
|
I was right at the edge of their circle, like the tail of a Q...
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Aimee Bender |
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99f77be
|
When the light at Vernon turned green, we stepped into the street and George grabbed my hand and the ghosts of our younger selves crossed with us.
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youth
past
memory
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Aimee Bender |
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1a4013e
|
No one needed to say it, but the room overflowed with that sort of blessing. The combination of loss and abundance. The abundance that has no guilt. The loss that has no fix. The simple tiredness that is not weary. The hope not built on blindness.
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ineffable
wordless
hope
hymn
blessing
blindness
mood
description
beautiful
guilt
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Aimee Bender |
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6e7639b
|
But I loved George in part because he believed me; because if I stood in a cold, plain room and yelled FIRE, he would walk over and ask me why.
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Aimee Bender |
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32b0306
|
after all, she had birthed us alone, diapered and fed us, helped us with homework, kissed and hugged us, poured her love into us. That she might not actually know us seemed the humblest thing a mother could admit.
|
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Aimee Bender |
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dce10f3
|
It was the kind of conversation you could only hold in whispers.
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whisper
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Aimee Bender |
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c8849d5
|
I've noticed this: when it's the first date, and you fuck, the guy hold you much better than he does the next few times. The first date, you're sort of the stand-in for whomever he loved last, before he fully realizes that you're not her, and so you get all this nice residue emotion. I felt cherished, tucked into his belly, like we'd known each other for years and I was his wonderful girl and we both slept great.
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Aimee Bender |
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10bf0a0
|
He made a good salary but he did not flaunt it. He'd been raised in Chicago proper by a Lithuanian Jewish mother who had grown up in poverty, telling stories, often, of extending a chicken to its fullest capacity, so as soon as a restaurant served his dish, he would promptly cut it in half and ask for a to-go container. Portions are too big anyway, he'd grumble, patting his waistline. He'd only give away his food if the corners were cleanly..
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fathers
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Aimee Bender |
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2b60e1d
|
But what I kept wondering about is this: that first second when she felt her skirt burning, what did she think? Before she knew it was candles, did she think she'd done it herself? With the amazing turns of her hips, and the warmth of the music inside her, did she believe, for even one glorious second, that her passion had arrived?
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Aimee Bender |
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837cd0b
|
We're all getting too smart. Our brains are just getting bigger and bigger, and the world dries up and dies when there's too much thought and not enough heart.
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meaningful
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Aimee Bender |
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c33506a
|
While she cut the mushrooms, she cried more than she had at the grave, the most so far, because she found the saddest thing of all to be the simple truth of her capacity to move on.
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Aimee Bender |
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b2a1f7e
|
The phone is about the same size as a cigarette pack. It's no surprise to me that the traditional cigarette lighter in many cars has turned into the space we use to recharge our phones. They are kin. The phone, like the cigarette, let's the texter/former smoker drop out of any social interaction for a second to get a break and make a little love to the beautiful object. We need something, people. We can't live propless.
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cigarettes
smoking
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Aimee Bender |
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4ea1a97
|
The world can ask you to participate, but it's a day-today decision if you want to agree to that proposal.
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world
participate
|
Aimee Bender |
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08d98a4
|
I don't think so, I don't agree. The most unbearable thing I think by far, she said, is hope.
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Aimee Bender |
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7fb0bc0
|
Mom flipped through the magazines like the pages needed to be slapped.
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Aimee Bender |
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63005fc
|
I knew if I ate anything of hers again, it would lkely tell me the same message: help me, I am not happy, help me -- like a message in a bottle sent in each meal to the eater, and I got it. I got the message.
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sadness
|
Aimee Bender |
|
4d1b254
|
I can't tell you exactly what I'm looking for, but I'll know it when it happens. I want to be breathless and weak, crumpled by the entrance of another person inside my soul. I want to be violated by insight.
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wisheses
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Aimee Bender |
|
97581eb
|
Pain was no longer a mystery to him, and a man familiar with pain has entered a new kind of freedom.
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Aimee Bender |
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4ab75d7
|
It is all about numbers. It is all about sequence. It's the mathematical logic of being alive. If everything kept to its normal progression, we would live with the sadness--cry and then walk--but what really breaks us cleanest are the losses that happen out of order.
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|
loss
life
numbers
logic
math
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Aimee Bender |
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41be497
|
With my hand in his, I looked at all the apartment buildings with rushes of love, peering in the wide streetside windows that revealed living rooms painted in dark burgandies and matte reds.
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Aimee Bender |
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58f0b2e
|
When I crossed the street, according to my mother, I still had to hold someone's hand. At ten, I would be able to cross streets unhanded. I'd held on to Joseph's many times before, for many years, but holding his was like holding a plant, and the disappointment of fingers that didn't grasp back was so acute that at some point I'd opted to take his forearm instead. For the first few street crossings, that's what I did, but on the corner at O..
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Aimee Bender |
|
1429aa6
|
Listen. Look. Desire is a house. Desire needs closed space. Desire runs out of doors or windows, or slats or pinpricks, it can't fit under the sky, too large. Close the doors. Close the windows. As soon as you laugh from nerves or make a joke or say something just to say something or get all involved with the bushes, then you blow open a window in your house of desire and it can't heat up as well. Cold draft comes in.
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|
metaphor
house
heat
|
Aimee Bender |
|
87cbae6
|
You try, you seem totally nuts, you go underground.
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Aimee Bender |