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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
18 Mar 2024

Strange Horizons
We are very happy to welcome Dante Luiz as a new fiction editor on the team! Dante is a Ignyte Award winning author, and has been with Strange Horizons working as an Art Director for the past several years. We’re stoked to bring him on to the fiction side and have him bring his wonderful insight and skill to the fiction team.
Day in and day out, the rough waters of the Pacific slam themselves against the protrusion of sandstone the locals refer to as Morro Rock. White streaks of bird shit bleed down the rock, a testament to the rare birds of prey that nest in its pocked face overlooking the bay.
in my defence, juggling biological and artificial, i tripped over my shoelace, and spilled my lungs empty of the innocence that was, before guilt.
the birds, / who carry with them / the many names of the dead
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