China does not exist. Nevertheless, she longs to be there.
Children were vehicles for passing things along. These things could be kingdoms, rich wedding gifts, stories, grudges, blood feuds. Through children, alliances were forged; through children, wrongs we...
Children believe that everything bad that happens is somehow their fault.
Charis tried not to mind, since nothing that was or had been would perish, and the farm was still inside her, it was still hers because places belonged to the people who loved them.
Canlit might not exert the fascination of - say - a venereal wart.
Can a single ant be said to be alive, in any meaningful sense of the word, or does it only have relevance in terms of its anthill?
Can I be blamed for wanting a real body, to put my arms around? Without it I too am disembodied. I can listen to my own heartbeat against the bedsprings, I can stroke myself, under the dry white sheet...
Calling a piece of short fiction a tale removes it at least slightly from the realm of mundane works and days, as it evokes the world of the folk tale, the wonder tale, and the long-ago teller of tale...
By the time he got around to meaning it, the words had sounded fraudulent to him and he'd been afraid to pronounce them.
Buttered, I lie on my single bed, flat, like a piece of toast. I
But we own nothing they want, so we don’t qualify as terrorists.
But thoughtless ingratitude is the armour of the young; without it, how would they ever get through life? The old wish the young well, but they wish them ill also: they would like to eat them up, and...
But then it came to me that who I really am is a person who doesn't need to know who he really is, in the usual sense. What does it mean, anyway - family background and so forth? People use it mostly...
But the adjectives change, said Jimmy. Nothing’s worse than last year’s adjectives.
But something had shifted, some balance. I felt shrunken, so that when he put his arms around me, gathering me up, I was as small as a doll. I felt love going forward without me.
But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning. No use, that is. No plot.
But not, surely, for the first time in human history. How many others have stood in this place? Left behind, with all gone, all swept away. The dead bodies evaporating like slow smoke; their loved and...
But maybe, underneath, she loves him too much. Maybe it's her excessive love that pushes him away.
But it seems she’d wanted children after all, because when she was told she’d been accidentally sterilized she could feel all the light leaking out of her.
But in the end, back she comes. There's no use resisting. She goes to him for amnesia, for oblivion. She renders herself up, is blotted out; enters the darkness of her own body, forgets her name. Immo...