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.…
Day 1 It’s hot, even at night. We sleep on top of our duvets and sweat under rattling ceiling fans. We live too close to the sea to be an air-conditioned city—that’s what we tell ourselves. Most of us are asleep when it happens. We roll over and some of us sigh a little and…
I was taken aback when Mr. Medvedev gave me the news: my elderly neighbor Lidiya Silchencko had died and made me executor of her estate. I didn’t know her very well. Occasionally, I had asked her to feed my cat when I would go to St. Petersburg on business, and once I picked up her…
You always said I loved you too much, and I guess you were right. You said it again that day by the pond, when you told me how you weren’t responsible for my happiness and your eyes matched the water, sun-speckled and murky. That day when I loved you so hard that you exploded into…
Sometimes, Neil and I’d meet for lunch in a small Indian restaurant that served astonishingly delicious lamb curry with rice crepes. The waiter was a tall Sikh who often gave us privacy and a discount. We’d sit outside and watch the clouds swirl in the sky, our finger tips stained with tomato-turmeric sauce. On our…
Sweta caught me picking lint from my belly button. I was blessed with an innie. She didn’t bother looking away, and I gave her oodles of credit for that. You’d think, in a scenario like this, we were lounging poolside or finishing up a 10K in the park, but nope. We were both at one…
At 5AM, when I’ve been up all night, a wind sometimes rushes through the garden and sets branches and stalks rustling against each other. Sometimes I’ll be wandering through the house when this happens and I’ll stop in front of a window and watch them undulate. Sometimes the moon is just a fingernail in the…
Inspired by “Hans-My-Hedgehog,” a Brothers Grimm tale Nobody realized that Zhao Li was different until near the end of elementary school, when he started to look seriously weird. We were all the same cans of soup–and then he grew a layer of spines over almost his entire body. He still looked better than a lot…
Edward Scissorhands has taken up scrapbooking. He lives in Amagansett and meets, three times a week, with the six other ladies that form a scrapbook circle. After the city-folk have gone, the group meets at Lorraine’s house for tea and sometimes something stronger. This early fall day, the group sits on Lorraine’s porch as they…
