He says she destroys everything. He doesn’t mean this as mordantly as she takes it, but that doesn’t matter, his words sink to her marrow. What he means is that she is not careful with the charging cords of electronics, nor the book that he lent her that she took everywhere for six months, nor…

She picked up her first stone when she was seven years old. As she leaped to avoid cracks in the sidewalk, she noticed the speckled, pinkish rock in the center of a concrete square, as though an unseen hand had tossed it into her strange, solitary hopscotch game. Orb-like, vitreous, perfectly smooth, the rock reminded…

Madam was outside in her air-conditioned hall, holding court again with her new best friends. Sir, her husband was out for work, as always, and her two sons were away at boarding school in Shimla. But that wouldn’t stop her from spoiling rotten her niece, Sweetie Di, and her fiancé, Amrikan Sir. They lived in…

Translated by Amalia Gladhart Things happened more or less like this: the guy came walking down the neighborhood sidewalk. It was early Saturday afternoon and the sun was at his back. He stopped in front of a railing painted green. Oh no, he thought, oh no, please, not again, how old could she be? Seven,…

An enormous cactus grew in Sra. Rosales’ front yard, and it looked exactly like her late husband. She encountered the cactus as she went to throw her husband’s chair to the curb. The bristles formed a little mustache, and under that, a frown. “Oh come on,” Sra. Rosales explained, “I don’t need it, and nobody…

The boss came in Monday morning wearing an eyepatch, but none of us asked him about it. He never liked discussing personal matters, and we were afraid of him anyway. Herb wondered if it was rude to avoid asking about an eyepatch, and Mary said, “It’s a personal matter. How much more personal can you…

Mrs. Noriko never spoke. She answered the door in those outrageous runway outfits that aren’t meant for human consumption, and like most rich people, she gave shitty tips. Her building was one of those gleaming monstrosities in Forbes City, Manila’s ritzy oasis. The first time I met her, I delivered the coffee ground facial scrub…

When I drop out, I go where all the drop-outs go. The jungle is full of beasts with teeth, but at least there are no detentions, no pop quizzes, no ink smudges trailing down wrists, no teachers locking me in quiet rooms. My first night as a drop-out, I turn into a plague of toads.…

There are animals, heavy beasts that thump, thump, thump around the attic, and a family of swallows in the chimney that shit down and make a thick stew of white and black on the fireplace floor where the fire should go but doesn’t, and wind. Wind enters through large cracks and small pockets of confusion…

The voice hadn’t yet come out of the fireplace in Zoe Talancon’s new apartment when she moved in, unpacked her boxes, arranged her photos, knickknacks, and books just so. She was twenty-five, flush with a surprise monetary gift from Tita Luisa upon graduating with a master’s in mass communication. She was ready, long-ready, to leave…

As the children of single mothers, neither Miri nor I usually had big plans on Christmas. As soon as we could drive and Miri got a car, we started a tradition of going to the movies and then for a night swim at her grandfather’s place, which she called a house but was really a…

Tofu hot dogs grill up pretty good, I overheard a well-dressed man say to another on the metro yesterday. I was on my way home from work with a few sacks of groceries, feeling sad, as I’d just spied upon a form at work outlining cost-of-living increases for this and next year, and there was…