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Lepidoptera
Her family had no wings, only legs that could traverse blocks at street level, where no one was allowed since the Sickness.
Not nectar. Food,
They had no wings, only skinny arms and legs that could traverse blocks at street level, where no one was allowed since the Sickness. She knew others might think of how wings could help you fly away, at least, to a friend’s house—like the girl she knows three blocks down—not so far away, but impossibly distant since everything metamorphosed. She thought instead of the nervous chatter that now wafted throughout her house. She understood that her birthday gift, so surprising, could make her a helper to her parents, who could use a child to float above the city from a bird’s-eye view to find them what they’d need for today, for tomorrow, until the Sequestering was lifted and she might think of her wings differently, like a child would.
Abby Manzella is the author of Migrating Fictions: Gender, Race, and Citizenship in U.S. Internal Displacements, winner of the Society for the Study of American Women Writers Book Award. She has published with Literary Hub, Colorado Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Find her on Twitter @abbymanzella.
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In the After
We stayed warm and near to each other around the crackling flames. That’s how we continued on.
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Tumblr vs. Democracy
They tell me that my new job is to chisel a deep and lasting crack into the foundation of American democracy.
Whatever Doesn’t Kill Me
You’re safe now, said the plates, the walls, the glasses, even the golden chandelier that I hadn’t noticed before.