Clicky

issue 31

Hollow Are the Bones, by E.E. Cypher

Women’s bones never burn the same. You’d be forgiven for assuming perhaps that they take longer to blacken and ash, denser for burdens once carried, or that perhaps there is somewhere about in the smoke a scent, a haloed lingering which implies duress or pain, a weight woven into bone that makes them harder to flame. This is not true. Women burn like birds. 

Crumpled, by Steve Toase

We erupt into the world of ghosts like ink congealing through water. There is a moment when I think we won’t have any form before we become coarse grey fabric. You’re probably imagining us hidden, memories of when you wore costume sheets as a child, but our bodies became the cloth, thread thin and creased when we moved. Our eyes are rough-cut holes edged in torn stitches. To look at us you might think the cloth hides death-whitened limbs. There are no limbs anymore. Jessica and I have become the garments of death in a place where the deceased gather.

Remember This When They Find You, by Margaret Dunlap

When they find you, they take you in. They give you a warm blanket. They put you to bed in a small room on a cot that is not very comfortable, except compared to no bed at all, which is what you had before. The cot is not actively uncomfortable. It is merely a bed that does not care about your comfort.

My Bonsai Lover in Winter, by Rachael K. Jones

Every year, I cut my lover down again. I begin with her fingernails, then remove the dead blossoms from her hair, combing it long and straight in the planet’s weak autumn sunlight as she tells me her hopes for next year.