Two boys sit on a log washed white by the tides and wind. A driftwood fire hisses on the sand. Down the beach, the black waves roar. It’s August 1995, on the west coast of Vancouver Island. One boy, one teenager, is pale. The other is dark. Between them, they pass the bottle of Scotch…
She was from a town you would never pronounce right if you read it from a highway sign. You’d have to spend time there, or know somebody who called it home. Her angled bangs fell to her brow, framing a stare that conjured gemstones and tundras. Laron nearly died when he heard she smoked Newports….
i. I always buy the charcoal pencils separately, instead of the kit, so they know I’m not an artist. Today, one hard 6B. Plus, a cone of ice cream that stinks of stevia and a pack of tampons. The clock’s at five to midnight, cheap light pooling around the space where the cashier should’ve been….
The first place I lived on my own was a studio apartment on 101st between Broadway and Amsterdam, with two windows that overlooked the street. The year was 1980, not long after I had graduated from college. In the late afternoon, when the sun fell slantwise on the buildings across the way, I could imagine…
In Lahore, a season of smog set in with the new year. Mornings became a milky haze, swirled through with a fistful of turmeric. In this haze, my cousins Shams and Qamar crouched on the lawn, transplanting marigolds into beds of dried dung and river loam while my uncle shouted instructions from his wheelchair. I…
“These black eyes, a gift of the night / I use their darkness to seek the light.” —Gu Cheng, “One Generation” Beijing The first time we met, I noticed that your eyes weren’t even close to black. They caught fire in the dim light of the poetry workshop: eight women, including you and me,…
I stood in a hallway outside a hotel room. It was my hotel room. Ahead of me, at the end of the hallway, I could see into a bathroom that had a glass wall. There was a cubicle in there made of arsenic-green metal, like in a locker room or high school hallway. It housed,…
As soon as Tiffany steps off the yellow school bus onto the strip of grass across from her house, her stomach gurgles and roils and she thinks she might throw up. She’s twelve years old and just home from the first day of sixth grade. She’s a pretty girl, though she doesn’t know it. She’s…
Indra says no, don’t, and Jeff says nothing. They’re in his car on a quiet mountain road. It’s summer and hot and the windows are open. In the surrounding woods cicadas are roaring. Jeff’s hand is on Indra’s knee. He’s in the driver’s seat, twisted around, leaning close to her. It’s the moment before a…
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