These phantasms are concocted from a little kernel of conscience, or guilt, or fear, or loneliness. Sometimes others see them, sometimes they don’t, they’re shifting and dreamlike, and they operate according to their own rules. They’re unreliable narrators. They’re wise or foolish, in turn; they speak in riddles, they speak a questionable truth, changing and suspect, like all truths.
When bells ring out the time, the time passes strangely. The space between tolls seems impossible, like it’s hanging, waiting for something. For me.
Cars wait at the light. You are at the breakfast table in bare feet, wearing Jillian’s robe. A woman in a heavy coat labors onto the bus carrying all her things, a line of riders shuffle behind. Brakes release.
Someday he’d write the most perfectly beautiful story ever written, and he’d use one pencil for each word, and then he’d put each pencil back in its chipped plastic drawer until the next time. Some day.
I have been alone, I have been afraid. I have had few moments of love and warmth, but I have poured myself into them completely. There is no wise love.
The new snow forgot all boundaries between land and water.
A collection of all the articles we’ve published over the past month, for those who like to savor their Magpies’ tidings as an issue. We’re really honored this month to share photography from Paris, art from Ottawa, a brilliant article written in Tokyo about a Ugandan record label, along with beautiful poetry, memoir, and more.
The lights flicker and I fall to the ground in the tolling darkness.
They’re not meant to last very long, these votives, these penny candles.
The sky on one side stayed bright as day, but along the other it was dark and purpling like a bad bruise. The trees were caught up in the glow, but their leaves were all turned upside down, stark and white against the dark sky. The weather was coming, it was coming fast.
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