Expert Hunter

"Sometimes I talk to comfort people," Ofelia writes in "I Take His Picture."

I want to be the foremost Ofelia Hunt scholar. I want people to come to me to ask for elucidation upon texts. I want to be her expert.

I want to know what Ofelia is thinking when she sits down to write a story about killing her brother and boyfriend (not the same person). Even if they aren't her brother or boyfriend.

She thinks, "I am going to write a story."

There are a million stories that could be written. I've written some of them. Ofelia's written some of them. But now she must write another one. Sometimes she writes to comfort people. But now she wants people to be uncomfortable. She wants them to be dead.

She thinks about how you take a shot with a camera but also a gun. You take a picture and you take a life. She thinks about the things that someone might expect her to write about photography and brothers and boyfriends and guns. She writes those things, but also other unexpected things. She writes about the blown-away bits of her brother and the parts of her body where they might end up. I don't know why.