5 Quotes by Myriam Gurba

You never predict that rapists are lurking in the sun, sky, and trees. In other words, humans are as they seem. Seeming is real. After a stranger ambushes you and assails your private parts, everything becomes new. Everything is reborn. Everything takes on a new hue, the color of rape. You look at the world through rape-tinted glasses.

This guilt was an invisible but heavy albatross hanging around my neck. (That’s a reference to Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.) I wear that bird like Björk wore her swan dress. I wave from a red carpet leading to hell.

Guilt is a ghost. Guilt interrupts narratives. It does so impolitely. Ghosts have no etiquette. What do they need it for? There is no Emily Post for ghosts.

Every pretty woman who lives a long life gets to perform an art project called “watch my beauty disintegrate.” It’s not revolutionary. It just happens.

It’s not fair that I’ve had so much privilege. And by privilege I mean life.