The translator was now bedeviled by even the simplest particles. Does “and” or “but” go better here? Periods and commas likewise became insurmountable hindrances, veritable lions in the road, guardians of the original meaning.
(fiction)
Tag: Fiction
The Russian lived with his parents and grandparents on the other side of town in a tiny crumbling apartment near the library.
(fiction)
Most of the lies were about my mother, but I only learned about the lies years later at my mother’s deathbed
(fiction)
To know how to exploit the weaknesses in human nature in order to best serve Christ is one of the paradoxes of the inquisitor’s calling.
(fiction)
I watched the bag disappear around the corner. The wheels of the gurney creaked in the distance.
Are they always so handsome? I wanted to ask.
(fiction)
Her suffering fits right into the camera.
(fiction)
“I often wondered about the effect of living with no windows.”
(fiction)
So why had she made such a fuss in the first place? Plus weren’t they both growing old? Surely, a dribble here or there shouldn’t seem such a big deal. (fiction)
His guilt was such a constant companion that a serious argument could be made for the carpool lane, the last few days rushing him like oncoming cars.
(fiction)
It’s while waiting for the light at the corner of Twenty-eighth and Sixth Avenue that you first hear it: a soft hissing sound.
(fiction)
Malé is now the besieged capital of the submerged Maldives, built up precariously on the ruins of oil tanks and docking derricks, apartment blocks and concrete breakwaters.
(fiction)
Her keys might have opened the church, and she the one to serve sponge fingers like death.
(The Loop)
She spends her days tending the grapes, and she runs a little gift shop in the village . . . Now that she’s simplified her relationships with people, she seems even healthier, even more herself.
(fiction)
It was deemed very unfeminine to play the bridegroom . . . Girls would tease you and provoke you like a real bridegroom and laugh at your expense.
(fiction)
With boys comes a lot of stress. You worry about how you can buy him his own place, or you worry about who he’ll bring into your house.
(fiction)
A cacophony of voices inquiring, wanting to disentangle the mysteries of the tattoos like hieroglyphs, pictograms.
(fiction)
content warning: sexual assault
My mouth is full of blood, like a poppy growing in my mouth, it tastes like the pennies I used to throw in wishing wells.
(fiction)
Her mother continued to hand her things: that lost dollar, a Chinese cookie fortune, one missing pearl earring.
(fiction)
There is no such thing as old water, but when I answered, “I’m as old as water,” my son’s eyes grew wide. He says that because water cycles, it’s all super old. (fiction)
it’s still spring in Rome, a perennial incitement to live. We meet in Piazza Cavour, me with my selfish FFP3 mask, Luisa with her altruistic blue cloth one.
(fiction)
California has weathered him with sun and heat. Michigan has begun to change me, too. We’re two birds . . . both singing variations of the same song.
(fiction)
The rose bushes lining the sidewalk leading to the front steps appeared like sentinels at the Mughal court, waiting for a decry from the Indian parent at the parapet.
(fiction)
I look to the nearby hill, past her and the highway, and watch it blacken. Its lines are clean and honest.
(fiction)
content warning: discussion about suicidal events and ideation.
(fiction)
I wanted to shout, but my tongue felt like the army slept on it. I wish I had a bittersweet Lick-M-Aid.
(fiction)
I’ve never liked American reality TV because there’s so much hyperbole, yelling and arguing that reminds me of my childhood, that cramped home, the screaming matches, the constant fighting over money.
(fiction)
Moving beaters hacked and coughed like emphysema patients.
(fiction)
The space between the woman and the art flattened until she felt she was the art.
(fiction)
What does it mean when most of your countrymen live in Moscow or Los Angeles?
(fiction)
“The White Envelope (1975)” by Catherine Cusset, translated from the French by Armine Kotin Mortimer
All night long, Elena tossed and turned on her thin mattress and listened to . . . the coughs, the laughs, the sobs, and the whispers of all these poor people who had the same hopes as they did.
(fiction)
