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can it come in jars?
no, does it
in dozens, that’s what you mean
she thinks, dreaming
but zero gravity
condenses nothing
least of all
the feeling of
being swept off your feet
which she’s always considered
a strange expression
as she imagines
a giant-sized broom
would be needed
and what is she even? a dust bunny
hiding beneath
a castle wardrobe
quivering
gnashing her rabbit-sized teeth?
but in any case
there’s a sense of falling
like in those dreams
where you jar yourself awake
wondering
what’s my name, why’m I here
and what is this hideous place?
before conscious thought
sets in
fossilized
and everything wild
and wonder-touched
dissolves
like a drop of ink
in a dish of milk
and the cat tastes nothing
fishy



Gretchen Tessmer is a writer based in the U.S./Canadian borderlands. She writes both short fiction and poetry (way too much poetry), with work appearing in such venues as Nature, Daily Science Fiction, Cast of Wonders, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, as well as a previous appearance in Strange Horizons.
Current Issue
18 May 2026

Maybe we overestimated ourselves, I thought, watching the ferries hum against the wine-dark sea. Even if we floated above it, we were still bound to the ocean, engulfed in all its weight and inescapable history. To believe otherwise was a kind of hubris. But we had believed otherwise anyway, and so each of us had become something smaller, less human, suspended in a brittle net of want and memory. And then she appeared. At the wrong time, in the wrong place. My Scylla, my monstress, my deathless siren of anglerfish light. Longing, in that empty, unmoving ocean, for things that had not existed for centuries. How could anyone blame her? The only alternative was to grieve. 
My grandmother slit my father’s bones and let them fly with yeast.
the nightingale was caught in a net / and brought to a lab for further study.
Wednesday: Loss Protocol by Paul McAuley 
Friday: The Midnight Shift by Cheon Seon-Ran, translated by Gene Png 
Issue 11 May 2026
Issue 4 May 2026
Issue 20 Apr 2026
By: Athar Fikry
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
Issue 13 Apr 2026
Issue 6 Apr 2026
Issue 30 Mar 2026
Issue 23 Mar 2026
Issue 16 Mar 2026
Issue 9 Mar 2026
By: Lio Abendan
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
Strange Horizons
2 Mar 2026
Strange Horizons invites non-fiction submissions for our March 30 special issue on “Fungi in SFF.”
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