The voyage was long, so long. Disease made us panic. Someone was thrown from the steamship deck  into the blue-black sea — it was me. I sank down, down. I saw skeletons and hulls of clipper ships half-buried on the ocean floor.  I struggled to swim. I flailed.  Then I saw you — an unexpected […]

I sewed a shirt about my life from red silk, with buttons of ice. It looked sexy and stylish and smashing, but it gave me a bad case of lice. I baked a cake about my life with absinthe and chocolate ganache. Crushed glass was one ingredient too much, though. My confection went out with […]

My panting dogs didn’t plunge into the pond with their customary gusto. They hovered at the edge, and cautiously sipped. As I walked closer, I saw the reason— a dead porcupine floating on his side. His exposed backbone and ribcage were a crown for a demented woods goddess, the key to a lost language, a […]