These people picked you up and played with you and then left you lying in the rain
...The men eyed her with the automatic mix of curiosity, lust, and aesthetic judgment they always gave young women, subject to object, the way you'd stare at an animal. She pretended not to notice. To remind them she was a person was too much effort. Objects bore no guilt.
We have no home, she told me. I am your home.
We strive for beauty and balance, the sensual over the sentimental.
I couldn't imagine owning beauty like my mothers. I wouldn't dare.
There used to be a category called women's fiction - meaning not too rude, not too much sex, a bit domestic and internal. Women have changed so much. We're so varied. And we've become more interested in the same varied experience in fiction.