Our Infinite Fates

by Laura Steven

In a futile attempt at self-preservation, my mind rehearsed loss before death closed its fingers, as though practicing it would lessen the blow. It never did.

Hypervigilance had never saved me before, and yet the behavior was too deeply ingrained to excavate.

“I’ve never quite gotten used to the way smiles here are earned, not given.”

This meant that parents were often reborn as their children’s own children,

love was a physical force, and it was never wasted. Once it was called out into the universe, it would echo back to us forever.

Never again. How could anyone bear the weight of never

Such a simple thing, it would be, to bicker over what to eat for dinner.

verpiss dich.”

One of the things I loved most about modernity was how suffering was no longer simply accepted as a necessary part of the human experience.

The internet was a Russian doll, gifts tucked inside curses tucked inside gifts, no way of knowing which formed its core.

When you see other people happy, it makes you happy.

I wanted to see my body wrinkle and sag.

And I had just forgotten. That’s what I kept hitching on. The absurdity of my own bad memory.

This pain is all because of you, the chorus of shadow voices hissed at once, but I bridled the thought. Self-loathing would not serve us right now.

For how could such happiness swell mere yards away when my love lay dead?

To my dog, Obi, who cannot read but deserves to be thanked regardless.