cycads and ferns’s Reviews > The Vivisectors > Status Update

All I could imagine existing between us was the strange, restless silence that had characterized our interactions…a conversation had never started, and as the years mounded up behind us the possibility of beginning one had seemed more and more remote, and besides, that imaginary conversation had already become irrelevant because the silent one that raged around its edges was enough to occupy everyone's attention.

She believed that he no longer loved her sufficiently. He gave her no reassurances to the contrary...After months of vague paranoia my mother had acted in the only way she knew how. With no one left to inflict herself upon, she had inflicted herself upon herself.
The results had been dramatic. There was irreversible damage...My mother, my uncle told me, would not be the same as she had been...Good, I replied.

…this omniscient presence would love me…with a cold, unwilling obsession…so all the time that it was observing me it was also biding its time, as if waiting for the right moment to strike me down…I was unable to imagine love without dominion….