after (or, nine beholdings.) (Essay, March 2019)

1.             after eve, who lived in the garden.

When we were girls, we weren’t supposed to look adults in the eyes, and when we did, we could barely stand the intensity, felt like we were too close to a human kind of flame. This is how we learned about desire: sitting cross-legged in silence with colorful books folded open in the space between our thighs, eyes cast downward, into the corners, onto glossy pages, wondering what it would be like to be able to withstand that kind of heat.

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