They know when we are rubbery with sweat. They know how often. They know if it’s us, or just me thinking of you, my breath a flag in the air. They know what you whisper in my ear. Sometimes they interrupt. Rude, but we are louder, itching with so many urges. When I’m bitten, by…
The cyan of the YMCA pool; the clouds suffocating the sunroof; the thin ribbon of pain, fast and silver as an electric shock, that bisects my shin when I kick too hard. Chlorinated water glugs in my ears, and a whistle meant for someone else screams. This is the best part of sophomore year, will…
I examined the condenser. Three drops. Laramie moved slowly among the corn rows, stopping to pull a hopper off a wilted stalk. It squirmed in her fingers. “Fat one,” I said. She nodded, dropping it in her stew pouch. “They found a new island,” she announced. “What?” “Well, an old island from before,” she explained,…
There is a door we tap. No need to knock it hard, just enough to draw the bouncer with the clipboard out. We watch the people come and go, adding their names to the host’s list, too. They linger a breath, playing with the buttons on their coats or adjusting their scarves, before slinking off…
I always imagined that when one of our hearts would break, the other’s would shatter too. While my sister Evette and I have two separate hearts, we share a chest, a torso, and a vulva. We share most other things as well — like this one-bedroom apartment on the East side, Pollack prints covering exposed…
You don’t want me, and the force of you not wanting me creates a shape; the presence of an absence, like an amputated limb. Here’s the courtyard you aren’t crossing. Here’s the stone step under mossy tree where you don’t sit, pulling me down next to you. You don’t take me to a coffee shop…
He has peacock feathers. They stick out just above his butt – blues, greens, purples. They shimmer in the light. I like it most when he dances. The feathers shiver like virgins. I watch him in the anorexic moonlight. Every night. When it rains, snows, when the wind screams, and tonight, when the midnight air…
You wake up and already your Verum Anniversarium letter is in your inbox. For twenty years you have waited for this letter, a glimpse into your future…well, probably. Most likely. Eighty-twenty. For weeks now you have been preparing yourself for this moment, deciding what you were going to believe. In just three hours, the truth…
She had been waiting nearly a year for her pass to the Repository, or the Repo as most people called it. The line was long, as all lines were now, but it was moving. Her senses yearned toward the building itself, as it housed so much that she had almost forgotten. People her daughter’s age…
Everything had its place. She ran a finger along the edge of the mantle and examined each thing in its turn—the ceramic frogs, the strange vase that had belonged to her aunt, a small landscape of the sea. They each had respect for their proper place, and if anything got out of line—deviated—it was removed.…