When you got home you found me in the back corner of our not-quite-walk-in-sized closet, surrounded by shoes I hadn't worn in years, clothes I should have given away long ago, and miscellaneous scarves and belts and things that I hardly remembered owning.
I hadn't planned on ending up there, but washing the dishes led to laundry, which led to vacuuming, which led to looking under the furniture, which led to me finding that pin you had given me. I wanted to see the other things you had given me. When I was beautiful and you were kind.
I'm not...
Prison is for mossy bricks, reinforced iron bars, decrepid toilets and savage guards beating on the door every morning. How can it be anything else?
And yet, within the confines of this framework, there is a nook as tangible as any cell; the walls are closing in on me, invisible monsters lurking in the dark, only — these are worse than any monster imaginable, for they do not breathe, do not reason. You can't reason with walls.
The post seemed like a good idea at the time, for who doesn't dream of directing such a large, historic enterprise if given...
Forget all you know about everything. Forget history in it's whole. What If you'd not only have the power to control time, but everything else ? Not in a B-movie ' timemachine ' kind of way, no,no. Meet Ivan Barbossa. The undeniable man. The man who never dies, and when he does, he just shows up again. He only dies when time and space stop existing. The end of all things mean his end as well. This man has been around since the beginning of time, seen the first cell evolve, or met the first man and woman to have...
They were the best of friends, but the worst of enemies. My husband and his brother would become like tigers fighting for turf or for female companionship. And they would never stop. I liked it when we first met because, of course, my husband, then my roommate's friend, fought for the right to sit beside me at the dinner table, to talk to me, and would find all sorts of ways to stop his brother from any contact.
He didn't have to do that. I didn't like his brother much. They looked exactly alike, although there were 10 months between...
The lamp wouldn't turn on. Off, yes. around, yes. But on, absolutely not. No matter how many times he flipped the switch, no matter how many times he prodded it, shook it, swung it over his head, he could not get it to turn on. He decided to coax it. First he offered it things that humans like: chocolate, love and affection, sex. The lamp did not budge. Then he offered it things that his cat liked: mackerel, catnip, a laser. Nothing. He tried reasoning with it, but the lamp was dead to his entreaties. Look, he explained, you staying...
Travel light, but take everything with you. They were father's last words to me before he took my mother and sister down the wooded trail opposite mine and my brother's.
The cossacks had burned our village to the ground an hour ago, and he told us we had to flee into the woods, where they would have more trouble finding us.
When I was young, we used to play in the forest, so I knew it well. I would take my young brother Sasha to a lake a few hours' hike from here, that the cossacks don't know about.
I...
Set down the light
set it down anywhere
The pure clean of a random weeknight on the coach staring at the white ceiling. So many balls in the air so much that I can not control. I have given control to others.
It is my human condition.
I will set this ball here on this perfectly lit field. Void of trouble. Maybe someday I will throw it to you and wonder, as I lay here in this white clean apartment,
will you throw it back?
The Moon would never be the same again. She'd never be able to look at it in the same way, never be able to go back.
Nothing would, actually. Nothing would go back to being the way it was. It had all changed, in ways she didn't fully understand - she never would understand, didn't expect to.
She'd presumed that some things in life were constant. That you could rely on them - tides, stars, earth, and her elder brother.
The tides were changing, sea levels rising. The stars had shifted without her noticing. The earth was meant to be...
he ran into the room, his heart pounding and his clothes soaking wet. yet it wasn't dripping water it was dripping blood. Revenge was all the man had told him before he pounded at him. Revenge for what? what have i ever done? he looked for his phone and once he saw it he heard a pounding on the door. the house shook whenever the man pounded the door."you killed her! you killed her!" i heard him screaming and that's when i heard the door burst open and i could hear his heavy feet climbing the stairs. i dialed for...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. The doorway was not the kind of doorway best suited to huddling, and the gown appeared equally ill-designed for the purpose. Yet huddle she did. The rain dripped and sputtered from the sky, streaking her scarlet back as it fell.
After a time, she carefully unhuddled and picked up the bag that she had lain down beside her. She withdrew from it a small, glass orb, in which indistinct shapes and colours seemed to float. Lightning flashed briefly across the sky and as she held the...