You do not want your wings. You twist your back toward the mirror, tweeze, pull. Grey stalks at your shoulder blades, slow intimate slide of extraction, the satisfying stretch and snap of your skin as it clings and then surrenders. You do not want these wings. They are—will become—not the luminous white of a snowy […]
Someone must have fucked up at the zoo, Rhodri thinks when he wakes up one morning and sees a flamingo standing on his recycling bin. There’s a flamingo on my bin, he texts his friend Lowri. Bullshitter, she texts back, flamingoes being a sight uncommon in the grey-green winding valleys of South Wales. But before […]
The house of unnumbered stars will be there when you need it, the night cartographer waiting with her pens and silver inks. Do not be ashamed of wanting her to draw you a star map. It’s no surprise that it hurts when the world fails to understand the unfamiliar contours of your human constellation. It […]
In this part of the world, spring paints each roadside bank and woodland patch a shock of brightest indigo, composed at closer look of delicate bluebells in their thousands. One morning, while taking my customary route through town to my office, a man passed by me with a bluebell pinned to his lapel, glancing as […]
CW: Eating disorder/body dysmorphia Mai covered her bedroom walls with mirrors. The reflections reminded her she was still there, someone worth watching. From every corner, glass gleamed down at her like perfect smiles – she couldn’t see the blades gripped between their teeth. Her body had become parts of parts that couldn’t quite connect. Eyes […]
He sent my mother’s ghost to deliver the terms of the bargain. I accepted; there was no choice. When I asked what to expect, she said, Ten good years. The Whipstitch Man had visited me twice, once to take my sister and once to collect my mother. The second time, he caught me tucking my […]
You are four when you decide to swim to the barnacle-covered rock where your brother likes to squat, peeling snails up in between waves. You wade and wade until your toes can’t find sand anymore. Until your eyes can’t find sun. Pink floaties slip from your too-thin arms, and you sink for the first time. […]
A curl of bark, stained meticulously with sapWe listened and watched, root and leaf and stem and bark, and learned the marks and the sounds. We are neighbors. The witch says you are too new to be trusted, but we like the way your sprouts laugh and run, like large squirrels. Welcome. We hope we […]
1. Be careful. I have to say that. Otherwise the words will worm in my mind forever, insisting you’re hurt somewhere I can’t find, all because I did not remind you, once more, to be careful. In the aftermath, I noticed the glass bottle first as it rolled down through the wreckage of my house, […]
Bakunawa could eat the moon, but it could not eat Mohammed bin Salman. Every night Manuela silently cried out to it from the fourth story apartment balcony of her employer’s home in Jakarta. But the great sea serpent did not listen. It could not hear her in Jakarta. It could not hear her son in […]