In an uncategorizable dream, she was in a doctor’s office. The doctor had dyed black hair and didn’t use gloves for the pelvic examination. The room was full of rotting food. Then she was home and opening an envelope, and inside the envelope was a check for $100,000. 

You turn to see if he’s watching, if he’s afraid that you’ll leave, but can’t tell either way. Your jeans held your ass differently on hormones. You wonder if he can tell the difference.

The shape of violence lives invisibly inside of a woman. Now, the narrator is sharing a sliver of that burden with the perpetrator, and they are both wearing it, or are about to, publicly: she as the author; he, as a man with a pseudonym who has willingly submitted to being interviewed by the woman he wronged when she was a girl.”

You people read about our town in the news—first the rape allegations, then Dolly Molly, then the car accident—and you think you know what happened. You think you know something about who we are.