Guernica Magazine

Buried Deep

As we muddle through the unknown, the urge to tell secrets has only grown.
Green-Wood Cemetery. Photo: Michela Simoncini

A decade or so ago, when I was in my mid-twenties, a mystic advised me on how to rid myself of my then-boyfriend’s ex. If I wrote her name on a slip of paper, folded it tightly, and stuffed the paper into the rear of my freezer, she would harden like an icicle and slip out of my life and thoughts. I can see now that what I perceived as her haunting the edges of our relationship mostly consisted of the fact that, really, I wanted to be her friend. (I had known her before I met him, and she was a very cool woman.) But at the time, freezing her felt cathartic. I liked the contrast of it: a silly anxiety demoted to sit amid the ice creams and cubes and bags of frozen fruit and the frayed icicles that crept in at the bottom edge where the freezer sealing had gotten old. After I did it, I rarely thought of her anymore.

That action feels too naïve to connect with present circumstances: pandemic, political crises, mounting

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from Guernica Magazine

Guernica Magazine7 min read
Arrivals and Departures
“The year I found my own independence was the year they finally gained the right to go — and to stay — home.”
Guernica Magazine7 min read
“The Last Time I Came to Burn Paper”
There are much easier ways to write a debut novel, but Aube Rey Lescure has decided to have none of ease. River East, River West is an intergenerational epic, the story of a single family whose lives span a period of sweeping cultural change in China
Guernica Magazine5 min read
Al-Qahira
Growing up, your teachers always told you: “Al-Qahira taqharu’l I’ida.” Cairo vanquishes her enemies.

Related