I journey to nameless shores to wrestle glass balloons from other women.
Fiction
Do a dry run on the bus a week before you start, at the right time of day, carrying the right amount of stuff, in the stiff uncomfortable black shoes you can’t run in. If you don’t own such shoes, buy some. Don’t get paint on them.
The island, thirty-five minutes by air off the coast of Belize, is too small for anything like a runway.
There is no point in describing a man who traverses Nova Scotia on a ten-speed bike with a concertina strapped to his back, is there? Let’s just say that Randy was resourceful, which is why he answered my ad in the first place.
In Arabic, her father put questions to the old man. Whether these were advice seeking, or advice giving, Safia could not be sure. She never came to understand what her grandfather wanted from any of them.
As she sails over the barbed wire fence, a hot dry wind behind her, the cow thinks of birds. How useful wings might be at a time like this. Her spindly legs crumple and pink udders squash as the round of her girth meets the hard of the ground. Parched weeds prickle and lightning bugs flash.
I think I smell like alcohol. I’m sitting, eating a doughnut and thinking about last night. I wonder if my liver is O.K.; if I keep this up, I’ll kill myself. No, if I keep this up, I’ll become my mother.
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Room 43.1, Hair
Edited by Chelene KnightIn this issue:
Sonja Boon, Kat Cameron, Jhilam Chattaraj, Chelsea Comeau, Nikka Cornelio-Baker, Unnati Desai, Kimberly Edgar, Sherine Elbanhawy, Kim Fahner, Chantel Gibson, Ali Jo, Tamara Jong, Samantha Jones, Angélique Lalonde, Shelby Lisk, Asli Mahdi, Hannah McGregor, Téa Mutonji, stephanie roberts, Zoe Imani Sharpe, Mallory Tater, Délani Valin, Cara Waterfall, Adrianne Williams, Susan Wismer
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