I have periods now, like normal girls; I too am among the knowing, I too can sit out volleyball games and go to the nurse's for aspirin and waddle along the halls with a pad like a flattened rabbit tail wadded between my legs, sopping with liver-colored blood.

According to Tobias, women hang around longer because they’re less capable of indignation and better at being humiliated, for what is old age but one long string of indignities? What person of integrity would put up with it?

There are women gathering around me, the rustle of their feathers, a cooing. I am soothed and consoled, patted, cherished as if in shock. Maybe they mean it, maybe they like me after all. It’s so hard for me to tell, with women.

Some called it Eve's curse but she thought that was stupid, and the real curse of Eve was having to put up with the nonsense of Adam, who as soon as there was any trouble, blamed it all on her.

They were wearing camouflage gear direct from central casting, and if it hadn't been for the guns I might have laughed, not yet realizing that female laughter would soon be in short supply.

Why cry, you should be happy, you got out. But after all that’s happened to me since that day, I understand why. You hold it in, whatever it is, until you can make it through the worst part. Then, once you’re safe, you can cry all the tears you couldn’t waste time crying before.

It occurred to me that he shouldn’t be saying ‘we’ since nothing that I knew of had been taken from him… He doesn’t mind this, I thought. He doesn’t mind at all. Maybe he even likes it. We are not each others’ anymore. Instead, I am his.

The bonnets come to stare,the dark skirts also,the upturned faces in between,mouths closed so tight they’re lipless.I can see down into their eyeholesand nostrils. I can see their fear. You were my friend, you too.I cured your baby, Mrs.,and flushed yours out of you,Non-wife, to save your life. Help me down? You don’t dare.I might rub off on you,like soot or gossip. Birdsof a feather burn together,though as a rule ravens are singular.

Lilies used to be a movie theatre, before. Students went there a lot; every spring they had a Humphrey Bogart festival, with Lauren Bacall or Katherine Hepburn, women on their own, making up their minds. They wore blouses with buttons down the front that suggested the possibilities of the word 'undone'. These women could not be undone; or not. They seemed to be able to choose.