Ghost Parachute

I try to avoid touching the new manager, but on his first day he hands me a box of crisps that need to go on the shelves. It’s enough to link us, and I find myself in his too-warm hospice room, staring over his wife’s shoulder as we watch him die. She turns to face […]

Priya laid in the center of the square, face up, arms and legs splayed like a starfish. Everything in her periphery was the same soft tan that she came to associate with the desert. Tan dirt, tan floors, tan walls, and tan pointed arches. Even the grit under her fingernails was a light tan. Everything […]

In eighth grade, Juno takes my hand—the prosthetic one—and tells me a secret. I can help you with this, she says. I feel her weight on the plastic, but not her skin. I imagine her fingertips are cool and soft like a salamander. The bathroom we’re in seeps grey—uneven paint, metallic sinks, muted light—and tastes […]

Each one is a mantis.  Slight as a stiff line of rain, somber like a monk that’s not trying to take your money. I watch them from the window, how they cross the street with bowed heads, reverent or ashamed even when it’s pouring or when gusts twirl trash around their ankles like starved rats. […]

That summer day, we laid our bodies on the beach like lambs at the altar, using our crumpled sundresses as pillows. Smoothed our young skin with coconut-scented oil so it could burn better, for the boys. It was deadly serious. Meanwhile, scenes from the bonfire party the night before flickered into our minds. “I think […]

1. sailor suit The girl in the video (freckles, bangs, missing tooth) sits on the floor of a small living room, crammed but clean, and unwraps a cardboard box without ripping or breaking, surrounded by balls of discarded paper. Thirty years later she watches the video in a bedroom, crammed and dusty, the same room […]