Oct 19, 2018
Scorching, Smokeless Fire
Everything started when we were thirteen—young and learning to love the womanhood that our mothers forced upon us.
Everything started when we were thirteen—young and learning to love the womanhood that our mothers forced upon us.
Mama and Baba refused to leave our foggy little Chinese hamlet. Although they had traveled across the world, now they would no longer travel east of Arguello Boulevard.
The MC introduced each contestant, and at the end, said that that year’s grief counselors in black would like to be called the Bereavers. He mispronounced it as the Beliebers, and the audience laughed, because they are American, and have no idea what Bereaver could mean.
Patti never mentioned her own daughter. I realized she was a little broken too, like the rest of us. She had a tender point she hid from us, from me: the enemies.
We only used this table for special occasions, for Christmas and New Year’s and birthdays. And for the dead.
The two years after Daniel’s disappearance felt like a decade. My colleagues and students couldn’t decide whether to treat me like a widow or divorcée. Mae treated me like neither.
She whispered his words, trying to rekindle the magical spell Hubert had placed over her mother that day. Ruth hated him for doing what she couldn’t. He left.
“Yes, there are still whales, there are still haddock, crabs, seals. Their hearts beat, muscle and sinew unaltered by steel scale or steam-powered fins. For now, anyway.”
Captains are always making you think you’re secure and happy and then bam, you’re capsizing with an iceberg in your rearview mirror.
“Maria felt that everything had slowed down and she could finally breathe again. Until the night the moon disappeared.”
There were eighteen thousand two hundred and fifty victims, one per day over the course of fifty years.
Once you know the details of your lover’s past, what’s going to keep that past unreal? The present is our land to guard, and the past is a force that tries to cross the border.
Rosie is being followed. Her ex-boyfriend is having a hard time accepting the prefix.
What was it about us that disturbed the clients so thoroughly?
When a seatbelt is held in the fist of one human, and swung at another human, there are a few possible outcomes.
“The healer’s home is a genuine trailer and sure as shit there’s the letters J-E-S-U-S graffiti-ed in red right across it.”
Maggie and I had done plenty of kinky things over the years, but we’d stayed away from eating rare magical animals.
