It was like we were exchanging codes, on how to be a father and a daughter, like we’d read about it in a manual, translated from another language, and were doing our best with what we could understand.
AIMEE BENDERIt was like we were exchanging codes, on how to be a father and a daughter, like we’d read about it in a manual, translated from another language, and were doing our best with what we could understand.
AIMEE BENDERHe was also removing all traces of any tiny leftover parts, and suddenly a ritual which I’d always found incestuous and gross seemed to me more like a desperate act on Joseph’s part to get out, to leave, to extract every little last remnant and bring it into open air.
AIMEE BENDERIt seems the best work I do is when I am really allowing the unconscious to rule the page and then later I can go back and hack around and make sense of things.
AIMEE BENDERI am the drying meadow; you the unspoken apology; he is the fluctuating distance between mother and son.
AIMEE BENDERThat’s the thing with handmade items. They still have the person’s mark on them, and when you hold them, you feel less alone.
AIMEE BENDERI give boring people something to discuss over corn.
AIMEE BENDERLight is good company, when alone; I took my comfort where I found it, and the warmest yellow bulb in the living-room lamp had become a kind of radiant babysitter all its own.
AIMEE BENDERTo see someone you love, in a bad setting, is one of the great barometers of gratitude.
AIMEE BENDERand I get refill number three or four and the wine is making my bones loose and it’s giving my hair a red sheen and my breasts are blooming and my eyes feel sultry and wise and the dress is water.
AIMEE BENDERBut I loved George in part because he believed me; because if I stood in a cold, plain room and yelled FIRE, he would walk over and ask me why.
AIMEE BENDERI was with them for all of it, but more like an echo than a participant.
AIMEE BENDERIt is so often surprising, who rescues you at your lowest moments.
AIMEE BENDERBefore she knew it was candles, did she think she’d done it herself? With the amazing turns of her hips.
AIMEE BENDERAs a writer you ask yourself to dream while awake.
AIMEE BENDERWith my hand in his, I looked at all the apartment buildings with rushes of love, peering in the wide streetside windows that revealed living rooms painted in dark burgandies and matte reds.
AIMEE BENDERWhile she cut the mushrooms, she cried more than she had at the grave.
AIMEE BENDER