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It was hot when they finally arrived in Jakarta. It was the furthest they’d been from home together since their honeymoon thirty years ago. This time, Ellen and Joe were here to stay. Retire in paradise on Java’s pristine shores! Ellen had the brochure tucked into her purse; she’d carried it for the past nine months like a talisman. Their few belongings had been shipped ahead of time. Their grown son, Rock, the only thing left behind.

Sibley notices immediately that Arianne Hebert’s life story is scattered across her palm like a handful of freshly tossed pick-up sticks, she’d be easily misled, easily convinced. There is very little space between her thumb and life line, and the shallow heart line with the circles across it – like someone had pressed two pennies into her palm – indicate this woman has suffered.

//Glue Part I – Glue One of the greatest fears of your young life was of running out of glue. You had full faith in the healing properties of the substance. You’d been assured. You’d been convinced, proselytized to by the zealots of adhesion. You were sure that losing a limb could be solved were there enough glue to connect the arm to its socket. When Paul Campanelli came back from hitting his head on the swing set that looked like a horse, he told you his mom said they’d glued it at the hospital.

I’m allergic to water. Not deathly, no anaphylaxis involved, just a skin-deep intolerance for that most life-giving of substances. Out loud, I address questions about my condition with the practiced factuality of WebMD, but in my head I’ve become a little more colorful. “How do you shower?” Like you, I want to say, naked.

Chirahora (ちらほら): here and there; now and then; from time to time; occasionally Everything one can ever feel about a person, she has felt about him. She is in the first grade, seated on the blue plush rug, her short, stubby legs folded in crisscross applesauce. In the corner is a stain from the time someone threw up, on account of the most recent outbreak of the stomach flu. She sits in the opposite corner, her back perfectly straight, as she awaits her final fate.

Hector watched April suck down a Marlboro under The Strand movie theater’s yellow marquee dotted in scorched-black bulbs. Her pale face shot smoke through a black hoodie. Hector snuck across salt-sick Superior Street. The filthy Michigan streets needed a blanket of snow. It would soon baptize everyone: his worn-thin teachers, snow plow drivers, hibernating farmers. He crept toward her, heard her snort.

An amateur might think of it as panic, but Estelle Marks didn’t. She knew better. She was seasoned. There would always be second guessing just before a show, but a successful competitor took it as an opportunity to remember the solid foundations of her thesis. Estelle washed her breakfast dishes, a plate, a bowl, her coffee mug, one spoon. She dried them and put them away, too, because on days she had go out, she preferred not to leave anything in the rack.

Mell shares photographs of her Yucatán trip on her website. Images of Uxmal arranged to the left and the city of Mérida on the right. When Lang asks why, she replies that she doesn’t know. Something about imposing order on chaos; something about the doubling of opposites; something about time travel. She has more ideas. She can’t find room for them.

In late September, it’s still hot in Armenia, with temperatures reaching 30 degrees Celsius in the afternoon. At around 2 p.m., Vanya and I usually go outside for lunch. I still wear shorts. The sun burns my legs slightly. Locals don’t wear shorts, and you can instantly distinguish them from tourists or expats, like us. Vanya is an exception, though; he wears jeans all year round, no matter where he is. On our way to an eatery, we pass a boxing club on the ground floor of our apartment building.

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