Fiction

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,…

The man sat on his stoop waiting for the locksmith. He’d dressed in a hurry. Pajama pants, sneakers, and a sweatshirt—his hair still sticking out in places. He scrolled his phone while the workforce found their stride on the early morning pavement. Nannies passed him on their stroll, babies and toddlers wrapped and swaddled for…

The man she loves has red hair and is afflicted by a nameless and terrible unhappiness. Even so, he loves climbing trees, building small electronics. He loves insects. Today on their dog walk, he stops to move slugs off the sidewalk. She watches how precisely the man she loves takes a fallen leaf, and with…

In his quiet moments, alone with his thoughts, Chuck had to admit: something was wrong with his wife. He didn’t come to the idea lightly, but Alice had been pensive for a few weeks, an attitude that always meant rough seas ahead. That on its own wouldn’t have bothered him so much if she hadn’t…

At certain times of day, light bathed the vase on the fireplace mantel so deeply that the vase turned translucent. Shadows began to flutter underneath the glaze. Cobalt patterns of fish and reeds diffused across the porcelain like ink in water. Shulian claimed that the vase, which had been a gift, was fired in the…