Every kind of person will kill every other kind of person in every kind of way, says the man who invented the noose and cannot remember why. Simply because they can, and there is time.

They act as if they had never heard the question before. The what? they say. The air? What about it? We smile and rephrase the question. What does the air feel like to you, you being a bird, able to fly and all? Finally they seem to understand, and they meditate on this awhile. And then they begin: The air to us is a brother, a sister. We are intrigued, and lean in closer. The air, they continue, now quieter. We lean in yet farther. They peck us in the eye and laugh wickedly. Birds are bastards, every one of them.

She has never remembered, with any clarity, the pain she suffered between her legs or in her limbs—the memory of physical pain is so fleeting; thus women who bear multiple children—but the pain of lies, the pain of insults, of treachery, abandonments, these pains can come back to her, years or decades later, with incredible clarity. And they do, they do, they do! They lunge at her, with no shame about being so old; they have a permanent and exaggerated sense of their own importance.