A friend mentioned The Worst Person in the World  to me a long time ago when they were going through a rough time and the fallout effect of not quite knowing where to place yourself in the world. When describing the film to me originally, she'd said, almost casually, “Trust me, you’ll love it when you need it. " Well, turns out she was right and I wildly underestimated just how good it would be. Watching The Worst Person in the World feels less like watching a film and more

I didn't fall apart the way I expected, which surprised me. There is grief, yes, pain, yes, a narrowing, long ache in the chest, yes - but also a strange openness, where breath continues like a horizon, persisting without permission against the sea-line of each hour. It is true, what they say - that suffering is not a cliff but a slope. You lean into it deeply, stare up at its summit, adjust your footing, stumbling and screaming against the Sisyphean Hell of it but you move t

I unbury the girl, drag her tiny limbs from the earth-rot in my chest where I keep her hidden.     She wakes with a sharp sob, toddles aimlessly in the dark room, then folds onto the floor under the heavy shell on her back & cannot muster the strength to get up again.   So, I soothe her, holding myself softly by the ribs at night, until a dawn-haze floods the room, lifting the shell off her unscathed, fleshy body, as we face each other naked in the light.   Her name is my nam