Lydia Melby's fiction has appeared in Ruminate, Sphere, and the Austin Chronicle. She has published book reviews and interviews with editors of both Ecotone and The Fairy Tale Review with Flyway Journal, where she works as the fiction editor. She is currently an MFA candidate at Iowa State University, as well as an obsessive reader of many of The Rumpus' columns.
For years when I was young I would crouch beneath the dinner table to watch my parents drink after-dinner coffee and wine with an ever-changing group of scientists—a tall man…