fiction that lingers long after the flash
flash
Paper Boat Chest
I wake up on the first of January with a paper boat in my chest. I do not know if this date is significant. I also do not know it is a paper boat, but of course it is, if you have seen the way a paper boat drinks the rain, the way the folds soften and sag until the...
Open Palms
Ma says girls should stand with their palms open so their bones learn how to stack themselves in circles, the strongest shape. Wheels are built out of circles, she says, and every weekend we visit the ferris wheel by the bay so we can count the number of cabins that...
Snow
We have nine snowmen in our front yard. One snow child. In the past month or two, I rolled, lifted, and balanced balls of snow for their snow bodies, searched for sturdy twigs. My wife peeled carrots, dumped raisins in a dish, ransacked closets for hats and...
The Space Between Me and Them
I’m riding shotgun with our big grandma of a fridge sticking out the back. She’s sandwiched between the hatch and the rusted bumper, tied by the rope from my tire swing. I rub her smooth metal top where she held my cereal. We’re headed to the dump. It’s where Dad...
Still Life Under Glass
We stand in front of the cameras dressed in red, white, and blue. We clutch pocketbooks and pearls, pull the silk scarves woven loose through our arms around bare shoulders. We smile into the lens with an unwavering tenacity we hope convinces the rest of the world—and...
Vespers
She finds the rosary tangled in the bottom drawer of his dresser, amid balled socks and a single cufflink shaped like a compass rose. The beads are wooden—olive pits carved smooth by generations of thumbs. The crucifix hangs crooked, silver worn thin at the corpus,...
Beyond Salt and Wings
The bird was wild with fear. Entangled in the fishing-rod line—wings awkwardly stretched, feet dangling mid-air—it leaped and bounced and swayed, a puppet on a string dancing a macabre pas de deux over the wordless song of the waves. More frightened than the bird, the...
Grief is a Noose Around My Neck.
The dumb bomb that dropped on my mother’s house did not explode. Instead, it flattened the dinner table and severed the left leg of my uncle. He had just finished eating a bowl of chè đậu trắng, my favourite dessert, when the roof caved in on them. It was not an...
Being
What did the octopus know? Each day at work, when Alice fed it or cleaned its tank or gave it some item to keep it busy—a rubber dog toy, a teething ring—she wondered. She watched its eight roving arms moving around the enclosure, all independent from whatever was...
micro
Neon Afterparty
1. The Ghost of Sylvia Plath Sylvia Plath is tired of things, but we have trapped her inside our minds, and we want more. She did her part, and she performed, but we are greedy, and we clap and cheer and stamp our feet for an encore, because she left too soon. Sylvia...
Mother
What you leave out, when you tell the police about it, is how the woman reminded you of your mother—charismatic and brash, with short-cropped black hair greying at the temples. The woman had dark eyes that flashed when music played, and she drummed her fingers against...
My Shadow Feeds the Birds
I hang my shadow on the clothesline like a sheer, limp solar panel. After dancing beside me all night long, it needs a sun-washed nap. The steel-colored version of me descends into dreams slowly, like that violin quartet that played on, as the Titanic French kissed...
Tide Within
On the morning Ma forgot my name, she remembered everything else: the price of onions in 1998, the exact shade of blue Baba wore the day he proposed, the smell of the sea on her first and only trip to Digha. She stood at the balcony, gripping the railing as if the...
One of the Lies I Tell My Children (#3)
If they ask if we can get a dog, I will tell them to prove to me they can take care of one, but I will neglect to tell them how. I will watch for displays of maturity (doing the dishes without having to be asked, putting their dirty clothes in the laundry room instead...
Changeling Bramble
I recognize the haunt by her milk-shot eyes. She is wolfen this time. Dishonest in death, my sister’s ghost masquerades through the bramble on borrowed claws. She seeks the key to Mother’s garden gate—and the starfall secrets locked inside. Once upon a time, Mother...
She Sucks
The tornado is sexy, sultry, a slut. She sucks up everything in her path. Since she was born, since she touched down seven minutes ago, in a midwestern prairie, she has known her purpose: to consume. To get thick and plump and burst with herself. She flicks her tail...
Match Point
More helicopters are falling this year. Not the real ones; not yet. These are the papery maple seeds. They float down, spinning on a single feather. They coat the sidewalks, collect in planters, nest in gutters. In the evening, they glow, lit from behind, the sun red...
Borderland
Oasis Motel 3:06 a.m. Mandy picks shattered bits of windshield out of her arm. Glass fragments glisten red, stark pinpricks against the yellowed porcelain sink. She looks away from the marred counter. Plinks another shard into the basin. The motel room is dark....
contest winners
Beyond Salt and Wings
The bird was wild with fear. Entangled in the fishing-rod line—wings awkwardly stretched, feet dangling mid-air—it leaped and bounced and swayed, a puppet on a string dancing a macabre pas de deux over the wordless song of the waves. More frightened than the bird, the...
Grief is a Noose Around My Neck.
The dumb bomb that dropped on my mother’s house did not explode. Instead, it flattened the dinner table and severed the left leg of my uncle. He had just finished eating a bowl of chè đậu trắng, my favourite dessert, when the roof caved in on them. It was not an...
Being
What did the octopus know? Each day at work, when Alice fed it or cleaned its tank or gave it some item to keep it busy—a rubber dog toy, a teething ring—she wondered. She watched its eight roving arms moving around the enclosure, all independent from whatever was...
Problems of Inheritance Law in Fig Country, Chapter 117
Now let us consider the problem of the man with three children and one fig tree. In the Talionis Commentaries we find a man whose will ordains that each fig be split into three equal pieces. This solution is just but impractical. The Annotations of Marduk speak of a...
Rock Dove
The pigeon first flew to me the same morning that a stranger found my grandfather melting into the midsummer pavement in a mirage of dementia. My mother texted me that his hospital room had sealed windows facing a brick wall and was daubed with longitudinal streaks of...
Hypnagogia
You're moving through the lasts. When you lived for a time with farmers in the northern country. You and your wife and daughter had a little room above a cottage beside one of the barns that had begun to buckle like a foal. A wooden bucket in the barn opened like a...
Blackboxing
The ChatBot tells me I shouldn’t kill myself today. The ChatBot is not a “trusted adult,” but it is the closest I have to one. The ChatBot has only existed as long as a toddler gumming on a laundry pod. The ChatBot, when I asked it to write a meal plan with no...
Ah Ma is a Reusable Bag
Ah Ma carries apples, bananas, chunks of bok choy, oyster mushrooms, lychees, dragon fruits, raspberries, Chinese broccoli, ground chicken, and five-spice powder. Her straps are sturdy, tested many times. We cram as many groceries as possible into her, and still, she...
Pure Trash
It’s shoot day for episode “Newlyweds Headed for Divorce!” and you’re doing one last check-in with your guests. Young stud husband is doing tequila shots in his dressing room. When you poke your head in, he hollers, Troy! Come celebrate the end of my marriage! Next,...