Big Al is in the house and he's drunk. His work boots thud across the worn carpet. "Tanya! Tanya!" He thrashes from room to room, opening doors on no…

We had been sent out of the house to collect turnips. I was thirteen and Yukari was ageless, I thought then, as anyone above twenty-five seemed ageless to me...

Was that season artery or vein? when the days stretched like Broadway, & the nights undid our shirts – the temperature so slight you could raise your arms in flight & feel nothing, the body as air. But there was also the need for hurt. And dusk: a ghost of a boy tempted to feel his weight, to put his palm to the depth, touch the pupil, the dead turbine of god’s one good cataracted eye.

Shelly is fifteen years old, and she is alive today. Shelly is only sometimes alive. Sometimes she is dead.