For Cindy Pon In the garden where girls grew from flowers, their days washed in the distant trills of the queen’s wooden flute, a gardener toiled. His name was Rajesh, and in his spare time, he collected shadows. Shadows of nectar–loving hummingbirds, shadows of laughing fathers, shadows of hawks who preyed on squirrels. Rajesh had […]
As they pulled him out of the oxygen tent, he asked for the latest party. “Oh, Mr. Jones,” one of the nurses said, amused. “We wouldn’t forget that.” The nurses, women in gray smocks with pale faces, moved in and out of view, murmuring in conspiratorial voices. Something important had happened. Something that he should […]
The Sculptor Through every moment of carving, I want her as one wants a woman. I want this lithe creature whose limbs I’ve freed from their ivory enclosures, whose rounds and slopes are discovering their shapes beneath my chisel. She is delicately colored like the palest of women, and when I run my fingers across […]
Jameson did not settle well; when keeping his company, neither did anyone else. His fingertips tapped, his foot bounced, his lips were perpetually chewed or dampened with a quick dart of tongue. He kept his hair buzzed short, taming some flyaway curling problem. He exuded a cloud of nervous energy like biting flies. I learned […]
Dearest Maru of house unknown, I have purchased, these five days ago, a small piece of your glasswork. It fits snugly in my hand, a drop–shaped vial of flame. Desert glass, said the traders, shaped from the desert sand by your fiery magic. It speaks to me. No, more than speaks—it sings—of dawns in saturated […]
“What a delicious garden!” Jane said after we moved into the house and began to explore the grounds of the estate my brother had leased for the summer. It was good to hear such joy in Jane’s voice, for she tends to be absorbed in melancholy matters most days, and as spending the summer at […]
Under the light fall of spring rain, three masked figures dashed through the crowded streets of Tsang. As they ran, they called to each other with a chorus of animal sounds: the chitter of rats, the coo of the black pigeons, and the mewing of the city’s dainty–footed cats. They were followed by a string […]
There is a magic shore where children used to beach their coracles every night. The children have stopped coming now, and their little boats are tipped over on the sides, like the abandoned shells of nuts eaten long ago. The dark sea rushes up to the pale beach and just touches the crafts, making them […]
(For Patrick Farrell, who told me a story about that very fish soup one rainy night) PART ONE: It Seems I Met You in an Unlucky Hour After the War, and before the War, the first time I met him on the road to Moscow, the cat was wearing a green woolen coat he’d stolen […]
I was monitoring Cherie Peng’s pulse, breathing, her sweaty palms, all of it, when the Sarissa interrupted me. “This proposal of yours,” the Sarissa said. She—the Sarissa insisted on the animate feminine instead of the inanimate sentient pronoun like most of us ships—sent me the document reference so I knew which proposal she was talking […]