Size / / /

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Here it is, this haunted house, smaller than my thumb. As I press my eye to it, I perceive in this order: a window, a rose bush, a fish, a belly, a thorn. Here is the path that leads to the house. Nails are buried under it. Black pepper is sprinkled over it. Here is the door. It looks like a tooth. It smells like a frog. Surrounding the house is a silence. It is larger than the house. Mid-sized, in fact. It folds over itself in layers of stillness, layers which absorb all movement into themselves. I am not certain of their origin — this silence and this stillness. Whenever I have been still, I have not been silent. Whenever I have been silent, I have not been still. Like a clash of cymbals, my mind and my skin have often been at the same time roiling and blaring. But inside the haunted house, I am silent. Perhaps this is a side-effect of the shrinking. I would not be surprised. Death is only called death when it is all-encompassing. Now my mind is smaller than my body, the way it was supposed to be. When I press my eye to the window again I see: a fin, a petal, my brain, my sky and my sea.



Portia Yu is a poet from Hong Kong. Her poems can be found in literary journals including Worm Moon Archive, celestite poetry, and Crow & Cross Keys. In addition, her work has appeared in Where Else: An Anthology of Hong Kong Poetry.
Current Issue
17 Mar 2025

Strange Horizons will have three open fiction submissions throughout 2025.
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