Fiction

Your daddy had the kind of laugh you can tell came from the belly. It was genuine, heavy with something like freedom. What even is freedom in this city where we had to be mean or invisible to be queer?

They will toss longstanding marriages to the side, witnessing Saba at her most desirable, opening up like a flower, a corpse flower, titan arum, her body beaming compelling signals that cannot be ignored. And she will be receptive to this,…

i feel as if i could write an intergenerational graphic novel. something something about how my father came to the u.s.

When your home is built near a highway, you witness all the different ways people try to escape this brutal, smattering thing called living. In an explosion. Plunged into a car. Over the overpass. Once, on your ninth birthday, a…

There is no skin left. No muscle. No accessible anatomy whatsoever. Just two gleaming shells shut tight.

there is no formality between us; i hope you know that. you know that right? Her throat tightened, and a lump rose. She was tired of weeping like a baby at the tiniest occurrences of kindness as if she had…

It was appropriate to laugh. She laughed. He seemed younger than that to her, somehow, and also older. During the first date, when he’d slipped off his hat at one point and turned so his legs extended out from under…

Greed and malice gleamed in the eyes of the attendees; some wanted their brother’s possessions, others wanted to kill their fathers, brothers, and everyone else to enjoy the earth’s riches alone. So all the attendees said in unison: “Give us…

In the desert of Turkmenistan, the temperature inside the Derweze Crater can reach more than 1,800° Fahrenheit. Locals dub the fire pit the Door to Hell. But maybe they’re missing something important, Aries. Maybe everyone is—fire is not only a…

I’ve tried forgetting her but this philosophy class I’m in makes me think about her all the time. Every day I am a day closer to dying. I think I am having a crisis.

“What’s got you obsessed with this? Late night redditing?” “No,” Kathy said. “I think I dreamt about it. About being her. The girl robot. You know how dreams are; it’s all a jumble and you forget as soon as you…