Size / / /

I have been alone before I knew what that word meant.

I drank down poems about solitude as a teenager
and savored its treacly sadness, sweet like gula melaka
and as smooth as P. Ramlee's voice wooing
a sarong-clad school teacher in black-and-white cinema.

It was a melancholy romance that cushioned the bleak blow
of surviving only on one's own limited energy reserves.

I grew adept.

I became a generator not just for myself
but for others, stray travelers and passers-by.
Generating light, warmth, and comfort.

Alone.

It was such a delicious word,
filled with sad nobility,
the taste of dark cherries
swirled with dark liquors
Hades would not turn down.

*

Solitude became less palatable one day;
it carried the bleakness of unwatered gravel.
It was an isolation that had lost the romance of salvation.

Perhaps someone would change this fundamental condition—
perhaps love or desire would transform this dynamic.
This too was a romance, too luscious for words,
like the libido-teasing scent of fingers burned by guitar strings
or lychees, drizzled with the syrup of cane sugar.

That particular flavour died the night someone taught me
that to be possessed was to witness my body
transformed into a party I was not invited to attend.

It danced its own dance while my soul remained
in a dark hall encircled by bleak mirrors;
my face staring back at me as mathematics, theoretical physics,
eternal debates circling around a priori versus a posteriori
distracted me from staring at the dance that happened,
separate from my conscious self,
constructing a textbook endorsement for
epiphenomenalism out of my profound dismay.

This too was foreordained within the confines
of black-and-white cinema.

The generator switched off.

Switching it back on required
a shift in frequency and voltage.
I learned to embrace the bleakness
and to reverse my polarities.

My generator is now fueled by dark matter
exuding enough pull to repel and to swallow universes.




Nin Harris is an author, poet, and tenured postcolonial Gothic scholar who exists in a perpetual state of unheimlich. Nin writes Gothic fiction, cyberpunk, nerdcore post-apocalyptic fiction, planetary romance, and various other forms of hyphenated weird fiction. Nin’s publishing credits include Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Strange Horizons, and The Dark.
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