Size / / /

Calved, set adrift, sea-girt,

whether (to name each landmass)

dominant Gena or submissive Peg; sultry Page;

mousy Anne, or even surprisingly Egan,

the little boy in this choir of multiples (although he too

is equally damaged and sings off-key);

under a combination of drugs

and years of psychotherapy,

all the lost continents,

having fractured along faultlines

during an all too seismic

childhood,

begin to uproot themselves, to gather strength

for the trip back out of separation,

reversing the diaspora.

First to achieve substantiality, rising to the surface

like Atlantis reborn, is her core personality,

the black mass of the world she was at age eleven,

when everything fractured.

Puzzle-fitted back into the whole

and eventually assuming authority

over the rest, it's she who now asserts

tectonic control over her various selves.

The result is geopristine—

as if the original skull of the Earth has

reintegrated itself,

its verdant bones no longer separated

by blue chasms of guilt

and self-loathing.

("You made me do what I did," says the message

she finds in the bottle, sent to her by black currents

from the prison beyond the headlands. "No, I didn't,"

counters her healed brain now, echoing the gulls.)

Sutured whole,

the fontanels of who-she-was-before-

the-split fuse together seamlessly,

united once more.

Alone again Pangea rules, and is herself.




Robert Borski works for a consortium of elves repairing shoes in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. You can read more of his work in our archives.
Current Issue
7 Sep 2026

Strange Horizons
Strange Horizons will open to general fiction submissions on October 1, 2026, at 3 p.m. UTC! This window will remain open until we hit our submission cap of 1,000 stories. Our maximum word count for this window will be 5,000 words. We offer payment of 9¢/word USD. We do not read simultaneous or multiple submissions. Response time: Our goal is to respond to all submissions with either a hold notice or rejection within eight weeks. We hope to send acceptances or rejections within one month of hold notices. This is ambitious, and we might fall behind schedule. Please be patient
iii. There are no protocols for plotting to kill the King, so Alise talks about killing the King, whispers her plan in the Queen’s ear while they lie tangled in the Queen’s marital bed, Alise’s fingers tracing bruises that should not be there.
missed his mouth; tongue slipped in
but to live in that dusty old apartment house... crawling with Satanists
In this episode of Critical Friends , the Strange Horizons SFF criticism podcast, AJ Odasso and Electra Pritchett join Dan Hartland to talk about popular fiction.
We’re especially happy to announce some new appointments at the Reviews Department.
Wednesday: The Hunger of Those Who Built It by Wendy Waring 
Friday: The Language of Liars by S. L. Huang 
Issue 31 Aug 2026
Issue 24 Aug 2026
Issue 17 Aug 2026
Issue 10 Aug 2026
Issue 3 Aug 2026
Issue 27 Jul 2026
Issue 20 Jul 2026
Issue 13 Jul 2026
By: Aimee Ogden
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
Issue 6 Jul 2026
Issue 29 Jun 2026
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