Size / / /

Content warning:


Clark, if you’re reading this I am already
as a mosaic of bone,
as a green, flameless candle—dripping.
I knew the risks.

You told me once
when you were small and afraid of the dark,
you walked into the basement
and sat in the middle of the cement floor
until the fear was a thin broth
you could swallow.

I need you to do this now.

Imagine me as a copper, equine statue
with my hand outstretched, as if to say
Let’s go that way for awhile.

Tell people I was too good for this planet.

I was not. They
are not.
What is grief
but a love that is
too vast for us?

Imagine me lost with our home world. Imagine me
splattered. Imagine me taking flight, rolling sideways
under a plane’s sleek silver back
and disappearing up into its engines.

Imagine me, facing the hunger
between the stars,
dancing between
its teeth.

Imagine my end
as the dark. Drink it
as slowly as you must
so you won’t be afraid.



Leslie J. Anderson's writing has appeared in Asimov’s, Uncanny Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, and Apex. She currently lives in a small white house beside a cemetery with three good dogs and a Roomba.
Current Issue
25 Mar 2024

Looking back, I see that my initial hope for this episode was that the mud would have a heartbeat and a heart that has teeth and crippling anxiety. Some of that hope has become a reality, but at what cost?
to work under the / moon is to build a formidable tomorrow
Significantly, neither the humans nor the tigers are shown to possess an original or authoritative version of the narrative, and it is only in such collaborative and dialogic encounters that human-animal relations and entanglements can be dis-entangled.
By: Sammy Lê
Art by: Kim Hu
the train ascends a bridge over endless rows of houses made of beams from decommissioned factories, stripped hulls, salvaged engines—
Issue 18 Mar 2024
Strange Horizons
Issue 11 Mar 2024
Issue 4 Mar 2024
Issue 26 Feb 2024
Issue 19 Feb 2024
Issue 12 Feb 2024
Issue 5 Feb 2024
Issue 29 Jan 2024
Issue 15 Jan 2024
Issue 8 Jan 2024
Load More
%d bloggers like this: