Jenny Hval

I turned around, sat down on the toilet seat and looked down between my legs, where a thin stream of urine trickled into the bowl. The dirty-white porcelain was tinged with acrid yellow. Almost a shame to flush away all that colour, I thought.

It doesn’t help: inside me the boy continues to put his index finger through his hand, slowly but firmly, as if he is poking it inside my body, and then he retches again. I can’t get rid of the finger, the sound, the image. It’s as if I’m the throat that makes him vomit.

‘Oh, just a romance. Kind of stupid. I studied lit