"Leon was absolutely forbidden from entering the kitchen, making his perch on the countertop and the thud of his dangling heels kicking back against the drawers all the more satisfying." Fiction.
"He is five years old again. He has only ever been five. The sun is bearing down upon his Brooklyn block. You could fry a knish on the pavement." Fiction.
"I looked for stories that felt close enough to claim as mine, yet distant enough to claim as “fiction.” My grandparents, Guka in particular, served as entry into a world I didn’t feel I had access to—a world of painfully real people with proper, lived lives."
"At three am, everything is different. The skyline floats / on the east river while the emperor looms dark and silent. / Nothing means what it did when sleep fills your throat."
"There’s this photograph of my dad, from the late 1990s, in an old album somewhere on a bookshelf. He is standing on a rock, laughing. His hair is wavy, and he’s tan. The ocean is behind him. "
“‘You ever see someone choke on one of those?' Vito asked the vendor, pointing to a hot dog. From the other side of the metallic counter, the vendor’s eyes slowly shifted up from his phone." Fiction.
