Rachel Yoder

and now she would be this, whatever this was. A wild, complicated woman with strange yearnings. Stubborn and angry—soft and sweet, though, too. She was creator and then also the dark force that roamed the night. She was part high-minded intention and part instinct, raw flight

You always think something’s wrong with you, he said pleasantly.

ONE DAY, THE MOTHER was a mother, but then, one night, she was quite suddenly something else.

but she knew the horrible truth, that Nightbitch had always been there, not even that far below the surface.

Figure out how to balance it all.

I think working mother is perhaps the most nonsensical concept ever concocted. I mean, who isn’t a working mother? And then add a paid job to it, so what are you then? A working working mother? Imagine saying working father.

The kind working mother nodded with pity on her face. The other mom—the mom who did not sleep and had a baby and worked her dream job, the mom who was perhaps struggling, who needed some support, who was doing her best…but yeesh—was not making this look like it should look. Appearances. We can have it all. Why was she so ungrateful?

If she read the articles, examined the data, contemplated her lot in life, her place in society, her historical role in the oppression of everyone other than white men, she really had not even a sparse spot of yard on which to stand and emit one single strangled scream.

she was the only person in the entire world who could understand him, understand this unspoken language only the two of them shared.

Her husband—bless his heart—had never done well with sleep deprivation, yet she, surprisingly, had taken to it as if she hadn’t been a lifelong oversleeper, as if waking at all hours of the night and getting up at 5:30 a.m. was something she was somehow genetically programmed for.