Size / / /

When they roused me
from my thirty-year slumber,
my first memory was of that time
when I told you you made the best pie.
Who’d have thought I’d find a man
who cooks better than I ever could?
I wish that I'll never run out, I said,
and you lectured me once more:
the fleetingness of things
is the only faculty with which we enjoy.

Yet, when you said goodbye
as the avian disease took hold,
I never could let you go.
Call me mad if you wish,
but when I allowed us to be frozen,
I had nothing but your welfare in mind.
I knew they’d find a cure for death,
and though you might cry sacrilege,
such a thing exists in nature:
the hydra cheats, as do bacteria. Why
must crumbling doctrines stop us?

The cryogenicists are here now.
I am alive; soon, you will be, too,
and we will both be so for long.
They say you will be different,
having gone through death
before preservation; they say
you won’t know who I am.
Would you like to tell him? they ask,
but I was just leaving.
You have forever
to forgive me.




Anne Carly Abad received the Poet of the Year Award in the 2017 Nick Joaquin Literary Awards. She has also received nominations for the Pushcart Prize and the Rhysling Award. Her work has appeared in Apex, Mythic Delirium, and Strange Horizons, to name a few. Her first poetry collection, We've Been Here Before, is forthcoming this February 2022 with Aqueduct Press. You can preorder the book by emailing the publisher at info@aqueductpress.com.
Current Issue
18 Nov 2024

Your distress signals are understood
Somehow we’re now Harold Lloyd/Jackie Chan, letting go of the minute hand
It was always a beautiful day on April 22, 1952.
By: Susannah Rand
Podcast read by: Claire McNerney
In this episode of the Strange Horizons Fiction podcast, Michael Ireland presents Little Lila by Susannah Rand, read by Claire McNerney. Subscribe to the Strange Horizons podcast: Spotify
Friday: The 23rd Hero by Rebecca Anne Nguyen 
Issue 11 Nov 2024
Issue 4 Nov 2024
Issue 28 Oct 2024
Issue 21 Oct 2024
By: KT Bryski
Podcast read by: Devin Martin
Issue 14 Oct 2024
Issue 7 Oct 2024
By: Christopher Blake
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
Issue 30 Sep 2024
Issue 23 Sep 2024
By: LeeAnn Perry
Art by: nino
Issue 16 Sep 2024
Issue 9 Sep 2024
Load More