State of Paradise

by Laura van den Berg

Samuel Beckett once described tears as “liquefied brain,”

Drinking was a portal. It delivered me into these other worlds, all of them twisted and troubled, but at least the hive in my head hummed at a lower pitch.

God has put his faith in me and every time I even think about taking a drink I am telling God to go fuck himself.

I asked my English teacher if I was, in her estimation, a genius and she told me it was too soon to say for sure. “You can’t follow instructions to save your life. You daydream. You seem full of disorder. These are all promising signs.”

The novel is a pretty outdated technology, but that is exactly why we need it. The form is so archaic that it can’t be fucked with.