Fiction

The tree formed a lean-to, triangle shaped, like a pointed archway. The bear sniffed near the charred base.

Mr. Kwong did not count himself among the retired men for whom idleness bred new hobbies, who got up religiously for sunrise tai chi at the park or cultivated a collection of bonsai.

But in the soup, she could taste his sincerity, that he didn’t see her hunger as something to deny. He would feed her, gently, patiently, until she asked him to stop.

They told me about their depression, worried that the plants were absorbing their feelings. They told me gardening was their only escape and asked how they could improve so that eventually the plants would grow larger than them. 

None of my family came to stop me, to warn or lecture me, so I dangled my fingers into the dark, wet glitter of it. Up close it was more beautiful than I’d been led to believe, sheening and iridescent, like a spilled bottle of nail polish.

Since the fire, she’d taken to plinking the deer on the butt with the BB gun, which she figured felt like a small finger-flick, given that the distance was so great. Her brothers had shot her with BB guns at a much closer range, after all, and it was never catastrophic, so she supposed she shouldn’t feel guilty.

The husband’s hand caught briefly on the thick baubles dangling from Becca’s lobe. How many fires did those earrings pass through only to be lost in Paradise?

But by the time the twenty-seventh rainbow unfurled itself across the heavens, the protozoa didn’t even look up from their work. Didn’t the world have anything new to offer?