The part where our jackets and gloves and hats and umbrellas and sweaters and boots and gray storage bins all written on neatly with Papa's handwriting disappeared. Along with you.
Read MoreYour Space Between
The residents here are used to our visits now. Seeing us arrive doesn’t draw the stares it once did. I’d been surprised we were recognized at all, but a space colony is never so big as it first seems. Even the people who never saw the vids of Rhodan’s squadron shackled and loaded into trucks, the awful stills of me standing wooden-faced behind my mother at her inauguration, know who we are.
Read MoreHave Mercy, My Love, While We Wait for the Thaw
A group of robotniks sat in the lot. A fire burned in an open drum between them. They sat with their backs to stacks of old bricks. They drank vodka and gasoline. Their rusted metal parts creaked. Their human eyes looked at her as she came.
Read MoreSchlafstunde
Maybe I don’t have your talent for helping others. Maybe I’m not selfless enough. Maybe it’s like my dear teacher Mrs. LeFay used to warn me, that I get so focused on “art” that I can’t see the bigger problems staring me in the face.
Read MoreNotes to a Version of Myself, Hidden in Symphonie fantastique Scores Throughout the Multiverse
When Kirsten was little, her mom told her that finwomen preyed on weak little girls.
Read MoreCreatures of the Dark Oasis
The river is changing. You know this without knowing how, or why. Tatu doesn’t notice. She’s poking in the mud, digging for crabs. A black octopus climbs from the water’s surface. A mist that whispers a name. You understand it. You’re one with it, bopping your anticipation.
Read MoreSimbiyu and the Nameless
But only the worn carpets heard me, and they had no pity. When it wasn’t too cold, I took my pillow and wool blanket from the too-narrow bench and curled up on the carpet. I traced my fingers over the sun-bleached threads. Their patterns were familiar—the same triangles and rhombuses used in embroidery. The carpets held stories of engagements and weddings, children and grandchildren. Around the edges were the zigzags of protection.
Read MoreShevitsa
She was tired of performing, tired of competing, tired of the pressure, but most of all, she was tired of her father. She judged the distance, closed her eyes, and visualized what she wanted to accomplish, and then she opened her eyes and flung herself at the wall, angling her left shoulder to take the brunt of the impact. When she connected with the wall, she felt as much as heard a harsh crack, and she fell to the floor. She lay there, her shoulder burning like fire, but she had a smile on her face.
Read MoreIn the Monster’s Mouth
The man smooths over his mustache like it accentuates his Americanness, which it sort of does, and lifts the brim of his old Portland Sea Dogs cap to show his forehead, which I suppose he considers to be authentically American, like it has a mark of the treasury on it. He has the stim-marks behind the ears that tell me he’s a junkie, for splug, or wobble, or germ. Which is why he’s selling his rifle, I’m sure.
Read MoreAmericana!