“It’s surprisingly easy to accept. After decades of trying to decide for yourself, reading the books, studying the philosophies, listening to the podcasts, worry-ing all your grad school friends with your weird existential phone calls. Are you happy? Am I happy? What is happy?“
Category: Short Story
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“A Very Short Childhood”
“One slow afternoon at the café, Darius clicked through discount travel sites until he’d bought a plane ticket. He’d fly to Heathrow and crash for three days with Beatrice, a new hookup who’d passed through Fort Greene and told him she was a Londoner only after the sun came up.”
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The Tray of Sandra and Ruth
Crammed in a bathroom with both daughters, one foot on the bathtub ledge, Macy couldn’t stop thinking about Pilar. Shocked at Macy’s medieval notions of virginity, Pilar had helped her put in her first tampon. It hadn’t hurt. Pilar knew just where it should go.
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“The Cellar”
“History, Kamran reminded them, had trained them for lockdowns and famines and power-drunk police… They’d enjoy their new city, minus a few restaurant meals. They’d revive the window geraniums, air out the landlord’s musty linens. “And look at that sky, like a ripe grapefruit. Nothing can ruin a sky like that.””
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“Bad Faith”
“She has a reputation now—the cool teacher, the young one who doesn’t mind letting the conversation drift—and though she despises the notion that she might have struggled for it in ways Mr. D’Amico (Luca) never has, everyone knows that being the cool teacher is the privilege of the men.”
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“A Big True”
Standing outsider her locked door, he scanned his memory for places Yasmine might have gone—a drink? A day-trip? He walked the forty blocks back to Port Authority, spending most of it knotted in regrets and daydreams.
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“The Pinch”
True creativity is a rare and powerful gift, Goli knew, and it was possible to gleefully produce, even sell, your “art” while still being embarrassing.
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“The Woman in Bed Fifteen”
“There’s a lady in this ward without a baby. From her bathroom walks you can tell she’s had a section – she hasn’t gone bowlegged like she’s lugging a cantaloupe between her thighs… Either her baby’s died or in the ICU, I don’t know yet, but I’ll find out.”
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“Pedalo”
From Conjunctions No.69, Being Bodies: “If the body is a temple, it is one very complex, heterogeneous, mutable temple. We are conceived by bodies neither ours nor of our own choosing. We then are born, grow up, live our lives, and perish—all within the ever-changing context of our bodies’ encounters with the world.”
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“A Ride out of Phrao”
In her last week in America, Shirin sells or gives away all her possessions, returning to the same small parcel she carried when she first arrived—a purse full of dried fruit and extra underwear. She feels thirty again.