Mariia

“Now her secrets were nearly as precious to her as her art had once been, and, as she thought about it, there was something that has been secret about her art, too. The dreaming of ideas, the excitement she held silently inside as she began to work, the heights to which she fantasized a project might grow, the hours of work alone, the thinking and imagining, the conversations with herself. There was something beautifully, deliciously secret and intimate and intoxicating about that life, the art she had made.”
― Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch

“She did not allow herself to consider fully these questions, to dwell on what darkness has called forth a monster, a beast, a creature from the deepest and bleakest crannies of her humanness. She did not let herself dwell on the tight ball of fear inside her, because this sort of indulgence was one she could not afford. She must rise from bed, tend to her child, her house, her own well-being. She must pull it together, to put it quite simply, for the sake of her family, because, otherwise, what? This entire thing they has going – this house and family and life – it would all fall to pieces if she feel to pieces, and so she simply could not.”
― Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch

“It was her goal to make havoc, to leave a mess, to wrest from her form all of the rage and sadness and insanity of these years since her son was born. She had been storing it all in the puckered dough of her thighs, the sad little paunch hanging around her middle. In the dark-brown circles she could not seem to get rid of that framed her eyes days and night. In the joints of her fingers, which had now begun to hurt whenever she was tired or angry or sad, which was always.”
― Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch

“In the very deepest moments of it, she could not tell herself apart from her son who was so evidently a part of her, physically, that she could not shake the vertigo that overcame her at times, this feeling of sameness paired.”
― Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch