Shannon Foley
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Stories (1/0)
The Expiration of Girlhood
When I was twelve, my grandmother told me that pain was a woman’s destiny. She said this with pronounced certainty, like a doctor delivering a critical diagnosis. I was a nervous child, I bit the tips of my fingers - not the nails, just the tips, eating away at my fingerprints until they were raw, white circles of dead skin that were unnerving to look at. Stop that, my grandmother said. When I asked her what destiny meant, she answered that it was the inevitable happenings of life. When I asked her what inevitable meant, she answered that it means unavoidable. So, pain was unavoidable for women, what a senseless and dark condition to have, I begged her to tell me if she knew of any cures and she laughed and said the only thing that’s provided her an inch of relief was self-medication. I asked, self-medication of what, she said of whiskey.
By Shannon Foley11 days ago in Fiction