In my first nonfiction workshop I ran out of subjects and wrote an embarrassing essay about a person I’d believed myself to love while knowing they did not love me back.
Our professor hated it—You kissed me and now you don’t want to kiss me anymore! Boo-hoo! he mocked.
I nodded and smiled.
Sometimes my peers left that classroom in tears, but I liked his harsh opinions and anyway he was usually right. What a dark happiness I felt in his dismissal, that permission to be someone else. Boo-hoo!
Yet— how does anyone ever find a way to turn mundane hurt into a useful narrative?
I asked JV how he writes a song. There are two ways to write a song, he said, his two cats at his ankles, his face serious but smiling. Stabbing in the dark or stabbing in the dim.