This month, the dead bird on her front step was accompanied by a tooth. Renata gazed at tooth and bird both for long enough to miss her bus, then went inside to get a dustpan and brush. Paul was there when she returned, crouched over the dead bird. “Neighborhood cat’s back,” he said. “Thought we’d […]

Trauma is a ghost that haunts you. Grief another. Dad was dead. Mom gripped in a pall of anguish. And Sophie wouldn’t shut up. “Ophelia,” Sophie was saying, “we all perish in the end. Sometimes our end comes sooner than we’d like.” I stared at her. It was night. We were on the backyard patio. […]

“Awa, did you see this?” My sister is holding out her phone for me to read. There are streaks of brown henna, which she has been trying to apply in preparation for a friend’s wedding, on the cracked screen. Kana refused my help, saying my hands were too clumsy for the intricate, precise patterns she […]

What I saw and how I saw it: As if through a cracked piece of sea-glass, worn to kaleidoscope etching, all lights forming haloes and all darknesses eddying like some fungal sea. Through dry and bleeding eyes. At a distance, through the mind’s dirty windshield. In shreds and patches, drips and drabs, bits and snatches. […]