The air smells like wet dog. From across the platform, I hear the screaming of a child I cannot see. I adjust the straps of my backpack and swallow repeatedly, trying to get the taste of something bitter and phlegmy out of my mouth. A bird swoops down low in the slate-colored sky. Its freedom […]

At a party last night, a woman I don’t know well asked me if I was happy, and I refused, cheerfully, to answer. When she pressed the issue, something rose in me—so defiantly that I felt that reaction internally, like a bruising within my body. My veins twisted into coils of black. I fought to […]

In the moody, saturated, purple-hued world of my dream, I come across his presence. A cross-legged figure, hand resting over a deer’s bowed head, in a glen filled with fragrant, twilight-blooming flowers. He may be one of the lesser stars, but, as he turns his attention toward me, I am reminded that he is a […]