Eziamaka looked outside her window. The drizzle of the rain had stopped now. It was evening, the sun had finally come out of the dark clouds and cast a reddish hue on the wet buildings. Eziamaka walked back into her room and grabbed her camera. After clicking, she walked to the kitchen and put a…

These are things my father’s hands touched: lighter, wrench, knife, kittens, a brick. My father did it. Submerged the kittens in the black river. Did he do it with his bare hands? Did he feel their pulses dwindle? I got to keep the mother, she was our rat cat. I used to glimpse her crushing…

She slept all summer and only woke up when it snowed. We’d all spot the first flakes of the season drifting down outside our windows and think to ourselves, Oh good, it’s been so long since we’ve seen Mabel! She wore a velvety black jacket made from the skin of something. Lewis thought it was…

It was the birds first. We woke to find them dotting our yards one morning at the end of winter, wings limp, dead, like phantom lawn ornaments strewn across the grass. A disease, we figured, rubbing the sleep from our eyes. Something biological; chemical, maybe. There were refineries everywhere; nuclear plants never quite far enough…

It is all of a 3:15 in Zurich, yes, Switzerland. It is a bloated July in 2004, an election year back home in the States, and I go to the Zentralbibliothek to get a German translation of Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. It is all of a Thursday and just…

Once there was a girl who had to tell a tall tale for a PhD program’s diversity statement that no one was actually going to read, but that schools were required to ask for to be consistent with their mission statement and to not miss out on federal funding. The topic of the tale was…

The moment Hans saw the postcard-sized, paint-by-number picture of a labrador on his manager’s desk, he knew he was in trouble. The frame was expensive-looking and made of dark, exotic wood. It was turned slightly towards him, so he could see it but still think the picture was placed there for Mr. Ashfeldt’s own viewing…

Midday — and a crowded city square. Even on a weekday it’s busy with tourists and locals: standing, strolling, or sitting. Meantime the pigeons flock, like vultures. This place is a pivot upon which the city spins, and I myself have agreed to or engineered many a meeting here, perched quietly on the fountain ledge,…

My support for the previous mayor caused indignation among my friends. Even Carola, who never voiced an opinion and never ever lost her shit, called me a fascist snob after I defended said mayor’s policies of cleaning the streets of vendors. Then, as often happens in politics, the pendulum swung — a populist mayor was…

My daughter likes me to tell her stories before bed. She keeps quiet as I try to weave something meaningful with words, her eyebrows knitted in concentration. Being a parent in the evening is wretched — arguments over bowel movements, hallway lights, and the angles of doors fill your time, when you desperately want them…

When you and I turned into snails, I tore myself from my shell, and we squeezed into yours. We pressed against your spirals, and they stabbed my flesh, made me secrete unintentionally. But you laughed about it and scooched over for me. When we puffed into nebulas, I had to squint my cat’s eye, compress…

who chased her boy. who wasn’t playing a duck and goose game, but cocked her soft jaw and sprinted with the arrow eye of a coyote on a hare. who’d been made both fast and slow by the boy. who shoved open the restaurant’s double doors quickly but carefully because her mission was to escape…