Fiction

The first part that fell off was my finger. My pinkie. It floated down the creek after I stooped down to feel the water’s cool flow.

By the time it all happened, the monsoons had come and the mango tree had been stripped bare.

When she pulls out her keys under a cantaloupe-slice moon, I drop unnoticed onto a strip of yellow weeds by the curb.

The day my neighbor ran over his wife with a lawnmower, I decided to acknowledge the mold spreading itself over the cheese.

I picture kneading Rayan’s mound, needing the seed back into the earth, pushing and pulling until it spreads up through her body, reclaimed as ours.

I glanced at your screen, the warm bright center of possibility, and plucked the third idea from the top. A digital detox.

When we speak, the light pours from our mouths and blinds us.

At first, I didn’t know how to tell him about the tests. After knocking back half a glass, I thought: this was no time to be polite.