The Incendiaries

by R.O. Kwon

They’d have gathered on a rooftop in Noxhurst to watch the explosion.

In a lifetime, the average woman will eat her weight in lipstick. To covet is to begin to have.

If I asked the first question, then if I listened, head tilted, providing attention, they let me ask again.

joke. I hadn’t talked much with Liesl, but I would: in time, she’d confide in me, as well. The dad she’d idolized, who left; the men like beads on the string of a furious mother’s life. The anorexic spells. She’d been locked up in a clinic. Obliged to eat, to weigh in. Like a pig for the kill, she said.

It had rained his first day out of the gulag, the lines slanting like marionette strings.

Light spilled through closed eyelids, and I was turning into gold.

Phoebe, you’re a capable girl, but I’m afraid being alone isn’t a skill. It’s a disposition.