The evening before, Jakub told him, they could be as noisy as they wanted to be. They could drink, sing, shout. Many people even went out into the streets in the middle of the night and screamed, and nobody complained. Nobody got upset, not usually. If they responded at all, it was only to smile […]

Before the first word I uttered, before my lips even bloomed, before my brain was anything more than a collection of cells the size of a fingernail, I remember dangling from the hole at my mother’s back, sweeping left and right, left and right, my umbilical cord a flesh-and-blood swing. Mother would sing me a […]

The movement is unmistakable. Even at the end of the cinderblock hall where the fluorescents don’t reach, I know it’s him. He tumbles in slow motion. There is a soft jingling as he shifts and rearranges himself, replaces himself. He is mis-angled and mangled. I cannot tell if he is moving closer or further away. […]

The redfish is remarkable because despite the fact it’s dead, it is still moving. Opal, straw flip-flops in hand, watches it arrive. The dimmed, bloated body (once golden, once maroon) pushes itself onto the beach. With one tail sweep after another, it lurches past mangrove roots and driftwood. It stops once it’s struggled above the […]