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830, 831, 832, 833— on his digits he can see the crumbs of past attempts at family. He licks the strawberry stains and lists them in turns: • rejection via drowning at a river in Estonia; • so many silver baubles as he wooed British royals; • a dozen unique moments when men wanted blood […]
Before I knew I was pregnant I would stand before the mirror and wonder why I was different why I was growing what was wrong with my too-small skin. “Probably,” (they said, with certainty in their voices, as if they had ever felt anything like what I was feeling) “Probably you do not have a […]
Japanese legends say you will meet your dark dog like a friend, like a man too concerned for your welfare, like a host with a wooden lantern who can only light part of your way together, sending you off only so far as it is safe. But unlike a host who returns home, certain he […]
Poppies have never been my favorite flowers. Here they bloom all year long, if one can say a year in Hades, where no seasons pass, where summer never fades. Ironic, that— a land of death where nothing ever dies. I have almost forgotten how it feels when snowflakes fall and melt against my cheeks, when frost […]
Mother used to say if you sing the right note, time turns backward, an unraveling of mistakes, a new gasp of breath, a second chance, depths like a shipwreck, full of old magick. Back then, we sang desire bare to its bones, sharp in the moonlight, our songs relentless, reckless, and justified— all love is […]
Let us begin with the obvious: Once upon a time, you are in love with him (You are always in love with him) You are always in love with him, So let us accessorize him with the pulse of your still-beating heart Let him be a worthy end to the means of your death Means […]
The suitcase no one packs lives in the back of the closet in a shroud of wedding boots and radio sweaters, its hinges glued with labels from razed hotels. It holds textiles, tax stamps, a great-great-grandmother’s long shadow, the name of the uncle who worked the tobacconist’s shop. It holds recipes for sorrel and sour […]
the girl found the fairies in the crawlspace below her house where slants of light illuminated how they fluttered about and spun webs strong enough to snare mice she stared, fascinated, for a while almost forgetting about the wrathful thunder of mother’s footsteps above the fairies needed no web to snare the girl she started […]
The Greeks believed that a human being is one entity unseamed at the spine, opened at the breastbone, parted at the lips, which is why we spend all our lives pressing together at the hips, at the fingertips; our tongues locked like doors. Which is why we’re always shouting at strangers, asking, “Are you the […]
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