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Autumn 2021

The Myth of Chang’e

Chang’e is a god, but one to be pitied. For millennia, no one has begged anything of her, for no one envies her. Though she receives offerings, they are a kind of cruelty, a cruelty of kindness:

Invasive

I had been thinking towards the death of my mother for years. How would I grieve? How would our story, sparse as it was, end? And then it happened: My mother, who I had never met, who I had spoken to once on the phone for under a half-hour six years earlier, died.

When I Say Yes I Will Yes

which I don’t, but imagine for a moment that I marry my English turnkey. I pour beer at King’s Arms. I push buttons when drunks throw glass at the karaoke machine. I duck. I walk home at midnight along Uxbridge Road. I take the Tube to High Street Kensington at six to scrub rich people’s toilets