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I wonder sometimes how you are doing,
If he has stopped asking for cuts
from your first-born heart, if he’s stopped
demanding gold from your cunt, if he’s
since stopped insisting that his cock
is art, a shortcut to the old gods of being
happy enough.

Don’t worry.
You can keep him.

You couldn’t pay me enough wishes
to want him again, you can keep him
and his name for all the good that will do,
the syllables of it like shame and stretch marks
laid out like flesh in the gaze of a crowd that
has only worshipped in the true church of TV:
impotent, impatient, incapable
of respecting
Anything.

keep him,
seriously.

I just wonder sometimes if you remember
what it is like to be
happy.



Cassandra Khaw is a scriptwriter for Ubisoft Montreal. Her work can be found in places like F&SF, Lightspeed, and Tor.com. Her newest book—The Last Supper Before Ragnarokwas released on June 11.
Current Issue
12 May 2025

You saw her for the first time at your front door, like she wanted to sell you something or convert you. She had light hair and dark eyes, and she was wearing fatigues, which was the only way you knew that your panicked prayers of the last few minutes had not come true. “Don’t freak out,” she said. “I’m you. From—uh, let’s just say from the future. Can I come inside?”
Time will not return to you as it was.
The verdant hills they whispered of this man so apt to sin / chimney smoke was pure as mountain snow compared to him.
In this episode of Strange Horizons at 25, editor Kat Kourbeti talks to Naomi Kritzer about her non-linear writing journey, imagining positive futures, and how to deal with the world catching up to your near-future specfic.
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