Love Me Back: A Novel

Marie lives a destitute, bereft existence as a waitress amidst the lavish consistency of those she serves. She revels in her daughter’s dependence only to keep her at arm’s length, lets her mistakes pile up like dirty dishes, and snacks on the leftovers of her sexually blatant and self-destructive habits like her need for numbness will never expire. She seeks oblivion in a fast-paced, begging way, trying to make something with fistfuls of darkness, with empty acts that bludgeon.

Her hunger for absence, the paralleled vacancy she pursues and settles with, speaks to the darker depths of being human. Marie’s heart is home in the ashes of things, and every page, made of her pieces that don’t quite fit together, chipped away at my own. I think I’ll be forever trying to make sense of the wreckage that wanting leaves, of the way Marie compensated for her lacking by making pain even more tangible and burning.

Frightening in the best way, this story forced me to see what life can turn into when we play pretend for too long: a faceless, fitful shadow of a thing. It was such a beautiful experience, being in the slipping, unfixable night of her, of these words.