Issues
She tells me I am a loving human being the same day he tells me I am selfish and spiteful. She tells me I am brave the same day he tells me I’m a coward.
This painting, it makes me think of her. How she’d press her cheek against the small of my back and
listen to my breathing.
So I was good with bleeding, respecting it as admonition, as the body’s means of telling a truth. Bleeding, how the body keeps its contract with honesty.
Did he suspect when he watched me shoot hoops in the park? Or when he told me, a million times, to pull up my baggy jeans?
Two days before she gives birth, the 38-year-old watches a breastfeeding video from a national health institute, but it’s hard to practice without a baby.
The fractures, herniation, and slippages somehow become tolerable, managed through an elaborate system of forgetting and excusing and stores of fortitude that might otherwise be dedicated to breaking that which breaks us.
We are thrilled to share the second part of our tenth anniversary double issue, highlighting some our best short fiction and interviews.
Translated from the original by Noah T. Myers After the divorce, I decided to move as…