The Ten Thousand Doors of January

by Alix E. Harrow

It’s a profoundly strange feeling, to stumble across someone whose desires are shaped so closely to your own, like reaching toward your reflection in a mirror and finding warm flesh under your fingertips. If you should ever be lucky enough to find that magical, fearful symmetry, I hope you’re brave enough to grab it with both hands and not let go.

She accumulated the dust of other worlds on her skin like ten thousand perfumes, and left constellations of wistful men and impossible tales in her wake.

He consumed books as if they were as necessary to his health as bread and water,

Something about having a child bends you back to your beginnings, as if you have been drawing a circle all your life and now are compelled to close it.