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I didn’t mind the quiet stretches. It was like we were trying out the idea of being side by side.

Aimee Bender

My genes, my love, are rubber bands and rope; make yourself a structure you can live inside. Amen.” – Aimee Bender (Willful Creatures: Stories)
AIMEE BENDER

Band Gene Inside Love Rope Rubber Story
With 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 BENDER

Apartment Building Dark Hand Look Love Peer Room Rush Streetside Window
I felt the crumpled paper that had taken the place of my lungs expand as if released from a fist.
AIMEE BENDER

Expand Fist List Lung Paper Release Taken
I didn’t mind the quiet stretches. It was like we were trying out the idea of being side by side.
AIMEE BENDER

Idea Mind Quite Side Stretch Trying
This is why everyone who eats a Whopper leaves a little more depressed than they were when they came in. Nobody cooked that burger.
AIMEE BENDER

Burger Cook Depress Eat Everyone Leave Little More Nobody
But 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 BENDER

Ask Believe Cold Fire Pain Part Room Why
He 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 BENDER

Carefully Concentrate Desperate Detail Intimate Leave Open Part Remnant Ritual Time
I knew if I ate anything of hers again, it would lkely tell me the same message: help me,
AIMEE BENDER

Anything Ate Bottle Help Likely Meal Message Same Tell
It’s such a fraught and exciting and kind of horrible time.
AIMEE BENDER

Excite Fraught Horrible Kind Such Time
Before she knew it was candles, did she think she’d done it herself? With the amazing turns of her hips.
AIMEE BENDER

Amazing Candle Done Herself Hip Knew She Think Turn
That she might not actually know us seemed the humblest thing a mother could admit.
AIMEE BENDER

Actually Admit Humble might Mother Seem She
When the light at Vernon turned green, we stepped into the street and George grabbed my hand and the ghosts of our younger selves crossed with us.
AIMEE BENDER

Ghost Grab Hand Light Self Step Street
and 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 BENDER

Bone Eye Four Giving Hair Lose Number Wine Wise
I was with them for all of it, but more like an echo than a participant.
AIMEE BENDER

All Echo Like More Participant
You feel wonderful, you feel like somebody knows you’re alive, you feel fear because it could be a bomb, because you think you’re that important.
AIMEE BENDER

Alive Bomb Important Somebody Think Wonderful
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 BENDER

Code Daughter Details exchange Father Language Read
Mom loved my brother more. Not that she didn’t love me – I felt the wash of her love every day.
AIMEE BENDER

Brother Daughter Day Every Lover Mom More She
Light 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 BENDER

Bulb Comfort Company Good Light Living Room Took Warmest Yellow
Listen. Look. Desire is a house. Desire needs closed space. Desire runs out of doors or windows, or slats or pinpricks, it can’t fit under the sky, too large. Close the doors. Close the windows.
AIMEE BENDER

Blow Close Desire Door Large Listen Need Run Sky Space Window
I am the drying meadow; you the unspoken apology; he is the fluctuating distance between mother and son.
AIMEE BENDER

Apology Baby Distance Drying Fluctuate Life Mother Son Unspoken
As soon as you laugh from nerves or make a joke or say something just to say something or get all involved with the bushes, then you blow open a window in your house of desire and it can’t heat up as well. Cold draft comes in.
AIMEE BENDER

Bush Cold Desire Draft Heat House Involve Joke Laugh Make Something Soon Window
Mom flipped through the magazines like the pages needed to be slapped.
AIMEE BENDER

Flip Magazine Mom Need Page Slap
Language is the ticket to plot and character, after all, because both are built out of language.
AIMEE BENDER

Built Character Language Out Plot Ticket
But what I kept wondering about is this: that first second when she felt her skirt burning, what did she think?
AIMEE BENDER

Believe Burning Kept Passion Second Skirt Think Thinking Wonder
It 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 BENDER

Allow Back Best Later Page Seem Unconscious Work Writing
It is so often surprising, who rescues you at your lowest moments.
AIMEE BENDER

Lowest Moment Rescue Surprise
When language is treated beautifully and interestingly, it can feel good for the body: It’s nourishing; it’s rejuvenating.
AIMEE BENDER

Beautiful Body Feel Good Interesting Language Nourish Treat

I didn’t mind the quiet stretches. It was like we were trying out the idea of being side by side.

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I didn’t mind the quiet stretches. It was like we were trying out the idea of being side by side.

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