The salty, pre-dawn wind wove through the cornfields, whispering of the sea, of tides and sandy shores. Arline breathed it in, and something seemed to open in her throat like the start of a question.

The purring rumbles throughout the cathedral room. It is loud, but not the horrible, bright kind of loud that bars or doctor’s offices have. This is a cozy loud.

The cicada killers drone in the park /
Small rockets /
A display of gold in the sky /

You know how TVs have advanced so far they show details better than real life? A giraffe at the zoo seems unrealistic and vague, like you expect it to have more pixels or something. Well, that’s how the Nebraska sky operates.

Katie had always known the time, down to the second.

Georgia dumped the 50-pound bag of cockroaches in the hole and flashed a thumbs-up to the camera man. “One of the worst environmental conundrums, f-fixed,” she said to Tommy the reporter. “And it only took us a h-h-hundred fifty years.”

Her mother minced her steps like she did green onions, small and quick and determined. Her waist, trained the smallest in Faize to the width of an arm, showed the beating of her heart through her spine, and the rise and fall of her lungs, stacked atop each other.

The lemon of the kiss loitered on Seena’s lips so long that she thought of dangerous things. Maybe she could stay a little past the first yellow leaf, before the dew even iced over.

Reda hunched in her chair in the bright, cheery restaurant, her mouth dry, clenching her fists. A bear might as well have been lumbering towards her, the way her chest flip-flopped with nerves. She had no excuse. 

Rayla discovered the jacket in the back of a Salvation Army sale. Its camo green had faded to a dingy brown. Good enough for 50 cents. She tried it on, shoving her gloved hands into the pockets.

She touched someone’s fingers.

“Can you believe it?” Est-L’s wife, Nen-L, twirled and pointed at her microscope. “There’s even smaller things called planets! They orbit those tiny stars!”

Leira owned the Edge of the Universe. The café glimmered in the pocket of downtown between the clothing boutiques and the bowling alleys and none of the customers knew the accuracy of the name, or how close they meandered to the brink. 

The rose unfolded another petal across the Atlantic. Another wave of heat, killing all in its path. But she felt nothing from so far away. The space station elevator room ran a little chilly.

“I was a Russian code breaker in ’73,” Merina said. “You think dog is hard to figure out? You’ve been barking for 45 minutes.”

The woman held her four demons back, leashed according to the law. “No, no, I meant exercise, m’dear! My darlings are quite tame, thank you.”

These geese, man, they hunt /

In feral packs, snakes stacked /

On top of chicken breasts /

When Lissa drove the long stretch to work from Omaha to Lincoln the past few days, her iMind just fuzzed out, like a TV station gone staticky.

Kodi had always known the distance between himself and the nearest pie.

Why do people ask, “When will you bloom?” 

We are made with laughter and bones.