Stone, Memory and Want
There is a specific jouissance to being denied what you need. An ecstasy to it that comes to define you. It describes you as a potential, as a flawed thing, undeserving of the thing you want – for now, incomplete – for now. The horror of having desire satisfied never has to be faced. That’s […]
Three Times Lucky
“What’s the R for?” I asked in an offhand way, hoping to convince her that I didn’t care all that much. “Oh, that,” she drawled, then gave a soft laugh, turned her head to look over her shoulder like she’d forgotten it was there. “Dumb stuff you do when you’re young.” Amalia sprawled on her […]
Eversharp
The steel lives on the tip of my tongue. A strange synesthesia that bridges outer and inner worlds. Its edge hums in my veins. The cut it will make, the blood it will spill, the pain it will cause all force my heart up into my throat until my pulse deafens me and my mouth […]
Kiss of Fire
Blair had never kissed anyone, ever. And, of course, no one had ever kissed him. That seems obvious, but when people kiss, it’s never really clear who is doing the kissing and who is being kissed once their lips meet. I met him at a craft fair in Camden. He watched me weld the edges […]
We’re Sorry. This Number Is No Longer In Service
His thick, inked arm felt like a fleshy cage, trapping her in the bed. In earlier days, it would not have occurred to her to wonder, but age had made her more civil: how long would she have to lie there before it was polite to scramble out of the suffocating warmth of his embrace, […]
Ribbon Tales: Two: The Token
Once upon a time, long ago in a land far away (so keep your feminist panties on) there was a wise and powerful king. As despots go, he wasn’t a bad one. Within the context of his time, he was as benevolent as kings get. He cared for his country and his subjects, took his […]
Death Comes to the Poet
When death came to the old poet, it came not as a pale horse or a scythe-bearing monk. She came on an August afternoon, after the angry sun had nestled behind the ancient fig tree outside his window. No breeze stirred, despite the open doors. The poet sipped ragged breaths from the still and humid […]
A Mortal Fascination for Volcanic Eruptions
Silence cannot do away with the things that language cannot state. G. Bataille, Eroticism Darkened for atmosphere, the museum visitors move in whispering clutches, like clumps of reed in river water, through the artfully constructed maze of ancient destruction. Like all good exhibits, it has a narrative: a before, a during, an after. There is […]
Transfers
The arrivals hall at Heathrow looks like a badly provisioned shopping mall. A hundred branded grottoes to minor commercial gods. Has anyone standing around the chrome barriers waiting for arriving passengers ever bothered to visit any of them? As she waits, she tamps her anxiety down with objective musings on consumer behavior. She, anecdotally, has […]
Nathalie’s Tailor
It starts like a low, slow rip of paper, just audible over the hiss of shower water on the slate tiles. A slow exhalation of sharp-edged things that tears her throat on the way up, making a larger hole for the louder sound that follows. Until she’s crouched in the corner of the glass stall, […]