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“That the story is never true, but that the lie is indeed a child of silence.”

– Ursula K. LeGuin

There is a clamor of ancient lovers hiding under my hat. They sit or pace impatient, whittle bits of me with tiny knives also whittled from bits of me, and I let them. They each came to me, as lovers do, in the vast before—with small hands upturned, mouths quiet for a moment, as if to listen. They ride with me, now that all of that is over, into whatever immensity awaits, whatever next comes next, not noticing much, chatting with each other about the dark weather, stuttering in their time loops like mechanical dolls. Memories of a thing, fragments of a thing, they can hardly be called humans at all but they were when I loved them. I talk to them sometimes, on boring bus rides, or long nights in my apartment alone, and they entertain in the ways I expect them to: fondness for the past, a laugh, a brief flash of sensation far below, no small amount of fear, or stubborn love. They hush when I tell them to, or eventually. I cannot tell when they arrived, I cannot tell when I began, but I stumble forward towards everything to come, towards no end at all, and they come with me, weighing me down, lending enough heft that I leave behind a wake, which in the right light, to a broad mind, may look something like a story.



Sionnain Buckley is a writer and visual artist based in Boston. Her work has appeared or is slated to appear in Winter TangerineWigleafAutostraddlePhantom Drift, and others. Her fiction has been nominated for Best of the Net and Best Small Fictions, and she is a 2019 Rhinebeck Resident with The Seventh Wave. She also serves as a prose editor at 3Elements Review. More of her work can be found at sionnainbuckley.com.
Current Issue
25 Sep 2023

People who live in glass houses are surrounded by dirt birds
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Over and over the virulent water / beat my flame down to ash
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Writing authentic stories may require you to make the same sacrifice. This is not a question of whether or not you are ready to write indigenous literature, but whether you are willing to do so. Whatever your decision, continue to be kind to indigenous writers. Do not ask us why we are not famous or complain about why we are not getting support for our work. There can only be one answer to that: people are too busy to care. At least you care, and that should be enough to keep my culture alive.
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