Adrift in the Tokyo Reverie
Lavender Nikes, star-patterned navy blue leggings, and a puffy pink snow jacket. She is no older than five, and her mother is pointing at images of food items in a picture book, pausing each time to...
View ArticleThe Fisher Princess V
The Fisher Princess I / The Fisher Princess II / The Fisher Princess III / The Fisher Princess IV Max’s vision narrows, then darkens, like the spiral of a camera lens closing in on itself. Far below,...
View ArticleHyperPalatable HyperObject
If you could fit the entire world in your mouth, what would it taste like? Human civilization, its concrete pillars, rubbery telephone wires, and tarred roads, crunching under your teeth like a shell...
View ArticleFlood the Zone (1/2)
She boots up Dreams of Apocalyptica, clipping her fingernails on the couch while she waits for the game to load. Yellow crescent-shaped slivers catch between the blades, and then fall onto her dark...
View ArticleFlood the Zone (2/2)
She gets the sense the raft build is from an early edition of the game. While its component pieces are generic items that are readily available on the map, the crafting instructions feel unintuitive...
View ArticleWhat’s in my Bag (OF HORRORS)?
Hey, it’s me again. [Eyes are shaded, poorly, in navy blue. Muddy puddles up to her brow bone when she blinks.] By popular request, I’m sharing the contents of my bag today. [Big smile is unshakeable....
View ArticleCult of Hecate
It feels like the first day of real summer weather. The sky is cloudless, luminous, and impenetrable. A shell of forget-me-not blue sheltering me from the shards of glass threatening my mind. On darker...
View ArticleTime She Stopped
The days are hot and the air, impossibly wet. The tropical humidity feels as encompassing as a full-body slap of churning, green seawater. Retreating indoors to escape the onset of summer weather, she...
View ArticleBliss Point (1/3)
Waddling to the toilet at three in the morning, legs clasped as tightly as the latch to a jewelry box, she flings open the door of her bathroom, bare feet bouncing against the shock of the frigid tile....
View ArticleDidn’t mean it when I said it
On a Friday night, on the 100th floor of a glitzy hotel, I am standing in front of an elevator in cheap kitten heels and an ill-fitting black blazer, posed in front of the double-doors that open with a...
View ArticleBliss Point (2/3)
Sitting cross-legged on the quilted bed spread, Mina draws out the scene on a fresh page in Sal’s spiral-bound notebook. Sal lies down alongside her, her head propped up by her hand, her feet dangling...
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View ArticleNext of kin
I try, I do try, to forget her, because too much time has elapsed to force a reunion, because the distance is too vast to casually cross, because I am certain her feelings for me oscillate within a...
View ArticleWait and see
As children, we beg for attention, fight to be the favorite, scream at every injustice, and generally lead a daily existence that doubles as a constant plea for love. As adults, we feel the same needs,...
View ArticleBliss Point (3/4)
“The tiger,” Sal yells back at Mina, as they run through the stubbly grass of the neighborhood backyards. “That’s what you shot, right?” Mina nods mutely. Gone is her desire to deny. The scream rings...
View ArticleThe shores of memory
We half-walk, half-shuffle through brown sand littered with shell fragments, on a clean but otherwise unremarkable beach bracketed on one side by the churning gray waters of the ocean and on the other...
View ArticleBliss Point (4/5)
The girl has short hair that sticks to her flushed, sweaty cheeks, bracketing her face like a helmet, or like ribs around a heart. She has a lovely smile, but in Sal’s estimation her beauty is a false...
View ArticleHypervigilant
In the ruins poking over the horizon—sandy yellow, blurred at the edges, pink marble monuments glazed by the greenish sun—lies everything I have ever wanted. I stand on a distant dune, kitted out in a...
View ArticleNamesake
True to its namesake, this Sunday was bursting at the seams with light. I looked up at the sky and the clarity of its color—clarity as a pure and as vivid as the pinprick of a needle—took my breath...
View ArticleBliss Point (5/5)
Sal swallows hard and squeezes her eyes shut. She pictures her sister’s cool hand on her shoulder, steadying her, helping her first to her knees, and then to her feet. She thinks of all the times she...
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