I inherited the molting, which my mother will deny; she’ll insist it’s a thing only women do, each heartbreak withering from the body like a petal.

We are all harmonic oscillators / Sloshing around in watery bags of salt,

This variation on the elixir of life pairs the flavour of roasted roc with the medicinal potency of the philosopher’s stone. But buyer beware: this dish isn’t for everyone.

I want to sink my faces into the hot spring and see which one comes out breathing. I’m hoping it’s mine.

the train ascends a bridge over endless rows of houses made of beams from decommissioned factories, stripped hulls, salvaged engines—

That was Father—a storm in a drought, a comet in the night. Acting first, thinking later, carried on not by foresight, but on luck’s slippery feet. And so we were not as surprised as we should have been when, one warm night in our tenth year on the mountain, Father showed us the flying machine.

That cis-tem is now only a speck.

In the primary memory i carry, it is June 29, 1993 and, I, Beston Barnett, am nineteen years old. I am lying in my sleeping bag on the ground beside River Road, eleven kilometers northeast of Moab, Utah, USA, Earth, Solar System, Orion Arm, Milky Way, Local Group, Virgo Supercluster. A woman is there beside me in her own sleeping bag. Her name is Ann Surmelian, and she is two years older than me. We are listening to Patsy Cline’s greatest hits.

Another escape pod of a stellar wreck. Different, older, but human-made, of an unusual yellow color. Its thrusters were working and it was closing in on yours.

Over and over the virulent water / beat my flame down to ash