Luster

by Raven Leilani

I am good, but not good enough, which is worse than simply being bad. It is almost.

There is something about looking into someone else’s mirror, something that always gives me more information than I need.

During the years he killed for his country, he’d killed God, too, and he came back home inspired to make one of his own.

I think you need to have been alive in the eighties to like the music.

“We bred them like that. We made them needy and physically unfit. They used to be wolves. Now there are pugs with asthma.”

One moment the body is whole, and the next it is turned out like a rind.

God is not for women. He is for the fruit. He makes you want and he makes you wicked, and while you sleep, he plants a seed in your womb that will be born just to die.

I think I could have this baby out of spite. My parents made me on purpose and look what happened.