-
A Good Night’s Sleep
“The man wandering through Chinatown called his pregnant wife and told her he’d found a new tenant for the second floor of their brownstone. The tenant’s name was Mary.”
-
Web of Memory
“The words rest between us, I hope, like a rope of reconciliation. She never takes hold, however. The line severs.”
-
A Bad Habit
“She turned her head and looked up at the thin cracks in the ceiling. Her eyes traced the ruptures above them and Lizzie wondered what it might make it collapse. He turned his head and grabbed her face so her eyes would meet his, touched his nose to hers.”
-
Initiation Spins
“Some guy I must’ve known threw his hand over the glass to block me. He mouthed something I couldn’t hear, as if we were underwater, and tapped his finger on the side of the glass. Someone’s phone flashlight blinded me as it attempted to illuminate what was in it. Someone screeched.”
-
Allen’s New Kettle
“For a moment, Allen just stared at the kettle. The room felt smaller, like the air had thickened. He thought of Ryan, of work, of losing the job, and the apartment, and everything else, and then looked back at the kettle’s bright little screen, now a meadow in the wind, calm, and endless.”
-
Liquidation
“That could be anyone, I think. The beach, the cliffs, the moon, just something with a voice that sounds like Margaret. The ocean could have picked up her accent and dissolved it, carried what I know as Margaret—black hair, sports bra, raspy voice—and released its latent sound into the cold wind, back to me. A…
-
When blood is nipped and ways be foul
“She stood there, shuddering in place. She shook from the cold, from the fear, from the pain. She shook for what she had lost — something she knew could not be put back. For she now understood that Fear was not something lodged in her chest like shrapnel, but rather something that was taken away.”
-
Frog World
“Now, imagine you are a frog and you know that all your frog flesh and frog blood is shared with your frog brothers. What kind of frog would you be?”
-
Two Days and Two Nights
“Not long after that we realized there was little else to do where we were, so we stood up and headed out, us two boys stumbling through the cold night behind Mary.”
-
Purgatory is in a West Village Walkup
“It was one of those topsy-turvy Wednesday evenings in New York when one feels like they’ve fallen through a manhole and landed in New Amsterdam: when everything feels offputting and unusual in occurrence.”
-
Vignette on Lychees
“When she closes her eyes, the sun remains a white spot in her vision, and she can romanticize the eye damage.”
-
Submarine Story
“He reached out again to the metal, which seemed to bend out towards him too, its soft surface embracing his hand once more. The chain rang out again in the cold, cutting wind, which swirled around him.”