An Unkindness of Ghosts

by Rivers Solomon

Signs, however, didn’t rely on the existence of the supernatural. History wanted to be remembered. Evidence hated having to live in dark, hidden places and devoted itself to resurfacing. Truth was messy. The natural order of an entropic universe was to tend toward it.

Conform or die. That was his motto. I am oddly doing bits of both, each half-assedly.

The pipe smelled of mold and spores. Aster wanted to bottle them up and examine them under the lens of a microscope. They were the Gods and the Heavens. Bacteria sprung into existence first, before bug-eyed fish, before serpents, before thick-legged women with shoulders and backs so strong they could carry their whole families on them. Before they built a ship to fly to touch Gods.

He moved toward her, removing his gloves, their sweet, powdery smell filling the room. He had delicate, spindly fingers, made for gentle, fine tasks like crocheting lace and sorting beads and incising cadavers.

“We’ve all spent our whole lives believing this ship is it. If you knew it wasn’t, wouldn’t you give up everything too? I would cut out my own heart and throw it into the beyond for the split second it would beat somewhere other than this cursed fucking cage.”

Aster was obsessed with bifurcation. Wholes were foreign to her. Halves made more sense. A split nucleus could end Matilda’s tiny universe. She wanted to be the knife. She wanted to be knived.