Sometimes I wish I had been born male. Just every now and then. All right, I often wish I had been born with my very own penis. There, I’ve said it. And how many women haven’t felt the same way?

It begins with a kiss. Something that the magazines you have read your whole life tell you is wonderful, something that you have done many times before. An innocent kiss. You tell yourself that he could be the one. That this is healthy for you, that you must really like him because normally you’d have gotten sick of him after only a month. He constantly puts down your friends, and for that matter, pretty much the entire population of your college, your town, and the world, and you feel special. If he’s hanging out with you, he must think that you’re different from all the others, better.

It’s all about the win.

The nest is a mess. Bits of feather stick to the twigs, which she had bent into a perfect circle, round and deep. Twig upon twig, she labored, carefully carrying one at a time into the broken lamp post, pushing them through the opening made by the cracked glass. Now the nest is empty.