Fiction

Sister is a pine tree. She is growing into a big, big thing. I am sad she has no bones. I am sad her blood is sap. But sister will live to be five hundred years old. And I can use her bark to clean my teeth, pin her needles into my braids, and sleep …

Winner of the 2023 Tobias Wolff Award It was the eighties and we didn’t know better. We microwaved leftovers in plastic containers, pressing our faces against the radiating glass door, watching our meal spin glamorous circles beneath a warm amber glow. We ate hot dogs cold, straight from the package. We sprayed cheese from a …

In the beginning, before we knew how to move our bodies to the beat of sultry music, before we knew how to intertwine our tired tongues, God decided, on a lonely Sunday afternoon, that they were bored.             They decided to make people and places and things. Light and darkness. War and peace. In an …

“You need money?” her mother said, and her voice sounded faint, as though she’d called from a million miles away. Sasi picked at one of the loose threads on her quilt. She knew her mother expected her to say no.  “No, I took out the maximum student loan, and my meal card is good for …

The Grim Reaper holds a potluck on the second Saturday of every month, and I received my first invitation last week. Via email. We’ve only met twice. Once, a year ago, when my brother died of head trauma after a motorcycle accident. Grim waited in the corner of the hospital room like a hooded shadow, …

Last year Timothy and I went to Art Basel Miami. I insisted, actually, Timothy knowing less than nothing about art and my obsession with painting. In the hotness of Florida, the sun melted my makeup, leaving striped marks down my cheeks, and caused Timothy’s bald head to glisten like a marble dropped in oil. We …

The process had seemed slow at first. This was before it was a process, before the couple had decided this was something to document, to worry over. One morning, Jon’s husband simply woke up shorter. They stood together at the bathroom sink, staring into the mirror at each other, as they had done for many …

Winner of the 2022 “Tobias Wolff Award” in Fiction Years later, the village headman would sigh, “A place without a smile is a pajama without a drawstring – the minute you stand up and walk away, it collapses around your ankles.” Our drawstring stretches many miles from the bustling city of Calcutta to the tiny, …

I like giants Especially girl giants ‘Cause all girls feel too big sometimes Regardless of their size -Kimya Dawson, “I Like Giants” Today, you are the size of half the classroom even with your legs tucked against your chest, even with your neck craned at an angle and your cheek pressed so tightly against the …

Death draws a veil over the living. Like a somber version of the game, my sister Zoya and I played as kids. We’d get under the bed sheet when Mom was spreading it over the mattress. We’d bounce the sheet and catch fleeting glimpses of each other as the soft cotton rose and fell over our bodies. We’d try to escape half-heartedly, but our little bodies continued to move around in circles playing peekaboo.