Michigan summer, slipping away


August has only begun, yet I feel the summer ending. The evening sky darkens too soon. I’ve heard geese honking overhead at night, and tonight Youngest One and I saw two flocks of them passing overhead—like harbingers of the first migrating waves, pressed dark against the blue twilight.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Short Fiction recs! Feb-March 2025

  Some stories I've read and loved.   Stories from Flash Fiction Online’s  Winter Folklore Issue   “The Ice Cutter’s Daughter and Her Looking Glass” by Nadia Born in Flash Fiction Online The ice cutter’s daughter dreams that her world is melting. She knows the theory of thawing from common things: how candle wax weeps or sugar hisses in a skillet. But she’s not prepared for the severity of the sun.   She can’t hide her glee. After all, what young woman doesn’t secretly delight in the destruction of everything she knows?   The ice cutter’s daughter dreams of a summer land where “all things are melted and wild.” She leaves everything behind to find this distant country, to follow her dream. But what is the price she’ll play? A gorgeous, aching tale of both loss and gain, of dreams fulfilled—of a new home found—but also of what’s irretrievably lost.   “The Heartbreaker’s Apprentice " by Catherine George A job ad, posted online. The on...
Read more

Short fiction recs! Stories from Aug-Sept 2024

Some stories I’ve read recently.   Tales of Strangeness, Beauty, and Horror “Cicadas, and Their Skins” by Avra Margariti in Strange Horizons  I spent my first summer as an orphan watching cicadas fuck, scream, and molt. Wasn’t long before I plucked one of the cicada skins from the dry village soil. I brushed it clean against my secondhand clothes I was already beginning to outgrow. Dappled by sunlight, the carapace looked hard though I knew it to be brittle. A coat, people called it. To me it looked like a veil I yearned to slip into.   A fierce, angry, bloody tale. An orphaned girl has lost her mother and moved from the city to a small, stultifying village. Watching the cicadas, she learns that she can slip into a cicada’s skin. She can find herself in the skins of mice, birds, and more. And she can teach the other children of the village to do the same. An angry tale of wildness, of desperation and freedom, of seeking escape from the judgmental eyes of th...
Read more

Short fiction recs! December 2024--January 2025.

  This cold February I offer you a mix of stories from the old year and the new. Some are dark; some speak of loss and disaster and warn of terrible futures. But there are also stories that speak of warmth and comfort, coziness and love. And there are stories that mix dark and light in various ways, finding hope and beauty among loss.     Published in 2024 “Stranger Seas Than These” by L. Chan in Clarkesworld It is two days since our original projected mission end date. We are running out of oxygen and we are trapped in the throat of a god. Technology and a prudent safety review panel have kept casualties on deep dives low, but abyssal layer dives have always been risky. Still, there hasn’t been a fatality in years and none, to the best of my knowledge, within the trachea of one of Pelagia’s Godwhales. Perhaps they will name a safety rule after us.   A submersible crew trapped in the body of a giant, dying tentacled “Godwhale.” A scientist who seeks to...
Read more