The next Weekly Rumpus features fiction from Leah Griesmann. Here’s an excerpt:
For nearly a month Deuce did not speak with My-li. He saw in her stooped walk at work how it pained her, heard it in the high pitched tone of her unreturned messages, felt it when he played piano. But just like an off-key accompanist, he tuned her out. He had done it so many times he was good at it now. The fact that he didn’t trust her extinguished his love.
When he wasn’t at work he practiced new songs and played chess. He gave Maurice Tiny’s number and told him to call him directly when he had a pull. In bed every night he read about Buddha. The Four Noble Truths. The root cause of suffering is desire. Everything that arises will end.
Leah Griesmann was a 2010-2011 Steinbeck Fellow in Fiction at San Jose State University, and the recipient of a 2013 DAAD grant in fiction in Berlin, Germany. Her fiction has recently appeared in PEN Center USA’s The Rattling Wall, Union Station, and J Journal: New Writing on Justice. She is currently at work on a collection of linked short stories and a novel.
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