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The Insectoid in the Kitchen
“Benji looked at his insect mother with suspicion. She was acting unusually attentive.”
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Once Upon a Time, There Was a Mountain – Part 3: The Story
“A girl arrived at the temple gate in the autumn of 2008. She was nine or ten, barefoot, her feet thick with hardened skin and scaly with sores. She sat down in the courtyard and looked at the monk with the peculiar weatheredness of a child who has lived through things that did not belong…
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Woman of Clay
“She believed she was molded from clay. The same clay that made the fish in the canal and the flowers in the grass.”
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Necessary Information
“She gave the florist her name, Sally Hawthorne, and her telephone number and new address, and asked if he would put her name in the system. She explained that she and her husband had just moved, that the house didn’t feel like home, so she’d been looking for somewhere nice to buy flowers, but found…
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Blessed Jamie
“Jamie’s ghost pervaded every corner of our home like cobwebs. All of my flaws were seen through the lens of his perfection, even though we had never actually met.”
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Once Upon a Time, There Was a Mountain – Part 2: The Persimmons
“In 1966, some children came, a line of red dots ascending the trail. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years old. They called themselves Red Guards. They came up the mountain with crowbars and red armbands, and they smashed the altar and broke the bell and tore the books and cut the persimmon trees.”
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i beg to be built again
“i wonder what it’s like to have a body that doesn’t feel like an afterthought hacked together with whatever spare parts god could find as he ran out of time to get me down to earth.”
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Once Upon a Time, There Was a Mountain – Pt 1: The Butterfly
‘“Tell me a story,” the little monk piped up. “Ma always told me a story before bed.” The old monk gave him the simplest one he knew, which was also the only one he knew.’
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A Death in Palermo
“We became a little acquainted over spleen sandwiches and arancini bought from street vendors. We ate on a city bench in the Port of Palermo watching the sun sink below the Mediterranean and speedboats return to the shore. Wasn’t this the life?”