When I wake, I am curled up as small as a seed. My hands are tucked between my knees, my face pressed into sweet loam. Morning dew blankets my skin like thick, glistening fur. There is a small potato beetle, yellow with black stripes, on my shoulder. I don’t doubt that there are more elsewhere, […]
Before I begin, I feel that I should mention the people who made it possible for me to stand before you now. Unfortunately neither my mother nor my father can be here with me today, but my Uncle Matthew and Aunt Bess are, and I thank them both for all their hard work. For most […]
The Magician Takes a Bow How many people can say they were there the night the trick went wrong and the Magician died on stage? Certainly, that first morning on the strip—dazed gamblers blinking in the rising light, the ambulance come and gone, with the smell of gunpowder lingering in the air—everyone claimed they knew […]
(Content Note: Use of racist slur.) First Movement: Creation The lights dotting the night sky filled the hunter with wonder and terror. He did not know what they meant, nor why they hid during the day. But each night he stared up at them, waiting. A fallow emptiness always settled on him after a hunt, […]
1 Here’s how I found out my girlfriend was a champion of nigh-space. 2 Her name was Vivian and she went by Vivy. We met on a dating site, and the algorithm thought our interests were similar and/or complementary enough to make us a mathematically near-perfect match: zombie movies, live shows with local bands, favorite […]
(Content Note: Abuse) Static. Startle. Wait. Wait. You’re—wait. You? “—your grandfather always said it was okay to talk to yourself—” Yes. You. You are. You are floating. No, not floating—numb. No, not numb—nothing. You are nothing? No. Wait. “—to yourself as long as you don’t start answering—” Thinking hurts. “—You’d better show up before that […]
I don’t know what I need, but I need a lot of it. And this is an opportunity. The store wasn’t here yesterday. There was a complex of car dealerships abutting one of those sprawling Phoenix strip malls where spray mist over the pathways so shoppers don’t get heatstroke. But now, somehow, inserted between the […]
It was a nice enough cabin, if Zanna ignored the dead wasps. Their bodies were in the bedroom, all over the quilt and the floor, so she’d sleep in the living room until they ascertained whether there was a live wasp problem as well as a dead one. If she ignored the wasps, it was […]
I am dying of the war, though not in it. Such is the nature of wars. A person doesn’t have to die in battle to be killed by a war. A person doesn’t even have to be a soldier to die of one. Wars have always been slow killers as well as quick. The war […]
(Content Note for use of racist slur.) John Wood boarded the Gracie-Ella ahead of the crew. He carried his sea chest on his shoulder. In a satchel slung low on his hip were his tools and the three things most precious to him: a lock of his grandmother’s hair, a shaving from the first cabinet […]