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Now that Mama was sick it was just him and the old man running the house and things weren’t going too well. It wasn’t just that the dishes were unwashed and his clothes were always dirty; it was as if a dark fog had descended on them all ever since Mama had given birth to…

Dr. Burton was having a no-good, very bad day, and I was more than a little proud of my role in it. I watched from the eaves of her beamed kitchen as she burned her coffee and then her tongue, cussing a little, and then as her boys—all five of them—fought her requests, demands, and…

I’m not saying you were wrong in Sainte-Chapelle when you said what you said about third-class relics while our blind guide named a crown of thorns we couldn’t see because it wasn’t where he pointed or wasn’t there at all. You said veneration was not worship as the city darkened and I stepped in a…

I tried not to yawn as Solomon led me room to room. The corridors of his great house stretched away in rows of golden doors encrusted in gems or jewels or shimmering shells from liquid-green scarabs. He offered to open each one for me but how many steps can a foot really take? He showed…

Bathing or being bathed, she is eternally unclothed. In paintings and woodcuts, in galleries near and far, the masters of Europe have left her like that, as if they saw no other way. Such is the weary weight of history, telling again the already told, nakedness begetting nakedness. She couldn’t have guessed, at eventide, that…

Sarasu is the first to see the birds. By the time the sun has crawled halfway to its peak, she has already been up for hours, gathering what little fodder she can find on the arid slopes. As she trudges back toward the cowshed, balancing a bundle of withered grass on her shoulders, she feels…

Karine had to admit that her friendship with Stephen was bizarre. Not just bizarre. Creepy? Maybe it was creepy. He was a child, really. And she was…how old was she again? These days she had trouble keeping hold of certain facts. Anyway, she was old. Much older than Stephen. But he’s my friend, she thought…

The email invitation read, The Children’s School: A year-end celebration of faculty and scholars’ achievements. Your presence is humbly requested. People said that my place of employment was a wonderful school. The teachers cleaned the boys’ and girls’ bathrooms. There were crossing-guard duties and after-school workshop responsibilities. Homework was assigned but there were no grades….

My brother talks about the time he was in survival training in the mountains and he had to eat a rabbit’s eyeballs. He’s on speaker phone in his hospital room, whispering. Now that he’s dying my brother has stories in his mouth. I shouldn’t be able to hear him but I do. I met someone,…