FICTION
“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”
Ever since your son brought you here, things have been different. He was crying when he dropped you off. You still don’t know why.
The day does not conclude with the gentle exhale of the earth, but with Mother Superior flipping the hourglass over, again.
Another image rises to us both: A man hunched before a TV, watching historical documentaries, correcting incorrect facts. Rasputin was not a priest, damn it.
He used to hold my hand on Commonwealth. I wonder sometimes if he ever still thinks about my mouth.
I’m dancing with my best friend’s husband, under the influence of his jaws and thighs.
You’ve been dreading this day since the moment you found out you were pregnant—perhaps even before.
My new neighbor is making a violin from a cigar box. He got the cigar box from a guard. The guard, presumably, got it from outside the Fence.
At the end of the meeting, the villagers agreed to contribute shillings and pounds to sponsor Elochi to a university in America.
She turns her back for me to fasten the rows of metal hooks. Why isn’t our small, tender freedom enough?
To be encased, Clint had always thought, was foolishness. Why allow yourself to be open to such sorrow?
A tortured simper uncoils itself across my mouth as I open another bottle of Penis wine.
It was spring and the hills were irradient, like they had to get out all their green in one short burst before catching fire.
When Laika the space dog comes back, bulleted to earth in a tiny white escape pod that dissolves upon opening, nobody can believe it.
And then he feels that familiar sensation of drifting—when his body untethers from the material world and he soon dissolves into a fine, floating mist that evaporates into the atmosphere.
Darkness always follows.
I know you shouldn’t keep wild animals as pets, but I’ve had the same spider in my bathroom sink for over two weeks.
I reached for my invoice, which Dr. George, holding it between thumb and forefinger as if it were a soiled diaper, dropped into my hand.
Allanson looked out of the viewport, at the ragtag flotilla of ships trailing behind, some of them slow to catch up. It was to be expected with the little time that they’d had to cobble the fleet together.
Share some abandon.
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