Trauma is a ghost that haunts you. Grief another. Dad was dead. Mom gripped in a pall of anguish. And Sophie wouldn’t shut up. “Ophelia,” Sophie was saying, “we all perish in the end. Sometimes our end comes sooner than we’d like.” I stared at her. It was night. We were on the backyard patio. […]
This month, the dead bird on her front step was accompanied by a tooth. Renata gazed at tooth and bird both for long enough to miss her bus, then went inside to get a dustpan and brush. Paul was there when she returned, crouched over the dead bird. “Neighborhood cat’s back,” he said. “Thought we’d […]
He was on the way up, the poor lad. Up from an infancy of neglect, out of the fistfights of his adolescence, the mind-addled haze of his twenties. Now, early thirties, he was peeling away from that self-sabotaging behavior, proudly clean of booze, weed, fast food. He was working out. He was healthy. He had, […]
It was hard to miss the large wooden O mounted by the door of the bungalow. O as in obedient, onerous, obscene. The stain along the bottom of the letter conjured an image of ragged teeth and a tongue. Gray and black rotting leaves filled one side of the porch. The window screens were rusted […]
I’ve always loved the sea; the caress of waves, the scrunch of sand, the weightlessness in the water. Even as a little girl I’d tell all my secrets to it—my problems, my worries— whispering them into the blue where they’d disappear. Today, I walk barefoot, holding my jandals in one hand as the tide rubs […]
He looks out of the caravan window. Filthy night. The hour is late; freezing cold bed sheets make sleep impossible. A relentless, suffocating winter and the weight of the snow draws the world down around him. Three sugars, he thinks. He strikes a match and lights the little gas stove to make his cup of […]
Anna stood at the edge of the dock, watching the lake’s calm mirror, the water serene, untouched. Something in her refused to settle. The last time she and Milo were here, they’d fought. A slow-burn kind of fight, the kind where every word had its own hidden blade. She’d accused him of trying to control […]
Moonshine City still had that new building stink. Aya stared at the white lines in the parking lot as rain dotted the asphalt. These lines were the only traces left of MAPITA Mall, that charmingly run-down shopping center that had stood here for two decades before. Aya could practically hear the crackling carnival tune of […]
Calvin tried to enjoy the morning breeze coming in from the Indian Ocean. He tried to enjoy the view: the unblemished sky; the water that went from brochure-blue to turquoise to entirely clear as it neared the pier. It lapped at the stilts beneath and passed under his feet to move slowly through the shallows […]
He is a king, in cities. A king, or a duke, or an executive. A powerful man, in places other men inhabit. Power is reciprocal like that: he needs their recognition. Together they build an urban hierarchy, a pyramid that extends far above the closed system of their minds. Each charts their course, their competitors. […]
