Fiction

It’s weird how hitting the ground doesn’t really hurt.

I once mistook loving a story for loving a person.

At night she would try to dig her way out, and I would pull my stitches tighter, snipping off the tips of her fingers. 

Fiction is a more subtle and sophisticated revenge porn.

They were no longer comrades, but post-conflict combatants. The war is over, he said, a phrase he would keep repeating throughout the day without emotion. It’s over.

Today I heard five Shakespearean insults walking along the corridor, and if I hear one more, it will be a good day, an even day.

On this morning, at this place, the prevailing wind is from the west. Given the location of the site, the air we breathe right now will reach the city in an hour or two. When it arrives in the city it will seem like a mystery, an affliction.

Random was what life did best, Bea thought. It conferred cancer on the virtuous, drunk drivers on the unsuspecting, it matched noble wives to unfinished men, wickedness to wealth, weakness to power.

The manager takes me into the back room to explain the company ethos and the role. Each neighborhood store should feel like just that, a neighborhood store, she says, reading from the brochure.