He had been walking since before he could remember, and before that he had escaped. There had been dunes of fine white dust and shattered stones lining desiccated river beds. He had passed passages decorated by impossible fossils, decaying wooden signs and roughly hewn markers proving undeniable theses and directions, and a skeleton proving that he was not the first to go this way. He had known...
David was a historian at the institute. The machine had been cold, like the look on his father’s face when he cried. The noises that erupted from it felt uncoordinated and overeager, like the dreams where he could not stop running and falling. The nurse had been friendly, like the voices in his head when there was no one else to tell. The doctor had been professional, like a salesman, like...
When I first met Adam he was picketing cigarette sales outside a convenience store. When I think of him now, I think of his bulging eyes, sweaty stubble, the smell of aniseed as he leaned in confidentially to whisper something he thought must be a secret, but back then he was clean shaved and suited and not prone to whispers. “You got a light?” I didn’t. “That’s...
You are welcome to sit by the fire, its flames dance in the rhythm that aches for freedom inside us, and the rumble of the consuming fuel echoes the debt of time that strikes at us in unrelenting syncopation. You are welcome to sit by the fire, I am telling myself a story. It is not my story. Here it begins. When you wake up in the morning, you are you, and there is no doubt. When you lay down to...
In a mute house behind a lethargic door on a shelf dressed in dust sits a box. To the box was a key given to a girl who swam in the ocean and chose to sleep in it too. In the box was a tawdry ring given by an Aunt who had not forgotten that plastic can glow like an emerald and be worth its weight in whispered secrets. The ring was found by a sad man making up a couch because he could no longer...
