From the Archives: Rumpus Original Fiction: Em
For her twenty-first birthday, Kiều’s younger siblings set fire to her bed.
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Join NOW!For her twenty-first birthday, Kiều’s younger siblings set fire to her bed.
...moreI was a watcher: Sometimes my father called me a hawk, taking in everything. Most especially him. I knew when he was angry by the clench of his fists and his jaw. When he relaxed at the piano, his shoulders rode lower on his body.
...moreI was fine. No one and nothing could hurt me.
...more“What’s a six-letter word for ignoring truth,” she might say, without looking up from the puzzle.
...moreOf course, maybe dividing the world into two kinds of people is just another way of making sure there is a crack in everything. When can you smooth out this fault line?
...moreI want to leave the party through the window and find my uncle standing on a piece of iron shaped into visible desperation, which must also be (how can it not?) the beginning of visible hope.
...moreMy favorite was usually the smallest, the most alive.
...moreMy wife, Ritu, a receptionist at a motel, works four nights a week. In the morning, I pick her up in our used Honda and drive her home. After she showers, I bring her a cup of fresh ginger and cardamom tea. She smells of lavender, her hair glowing with water beads, her eyelashes stuck […]
...moreWaiting to turn forty-six is like standing in the unrelenting sunshine.
...moreAfterward, there was dead silence in the kitchen. I know because I held my breath. Even air molecules seemed to still.
...more“Things can catch fire even when they let each other go. But we don’t give up. We don’t stop loving them.”
...moreWe baked a fresh bowl for dinner?, I wonder. Do you think the pen will sink or grow? Do you think a pen will sink or throw? Sure. This could be a very delightful exercise (for poets), I think to myself.
...moreThere is still light in the dark. This is the paradox that Little Bear has to accept in order to fall asleep.
...moreI laugh. My laugh, this thing that sounds better on somebody else.
...moreI pushed him so he glided through the fish, the eels, the boxed-in worlds of blues.
...moreYou are never really at peace with what you haven’t gotten.
...moreI feel guilt in the not good enough I carry alongside the not bad enough.
...moreWe both can disappear in our own ways, can’t we?
...moreJenny Qi discusses her debut poetry collection, FOCAL POINT.
...moreYou want to, but do you? Do you dare hope?
...moreThere aren’t enough trains in Los Angeles. Not enough for me to sleep.
...more“Balance is its own beautiful practice.”
...moreRajiv Mohabir discusses ANTIMAN and CUTLISH.
...morePoems echo, rebound, and speak to one another.
...moreFinding joy in the now, even as death and difficulty mark the days, is possible, a choice, and a practice.
...moreThe best books I have read about motherhood have not reassured me that these feelings will resolve.
...moreIt was a kind of madness to speak a language to my son that I hadn’t used in almost a decade.
...moreTo have lost, found, and then lost again seems especially wrenching, a kind of unmothering.
...more