I have a new, very short story up at Apex Magazine:
If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love:
If you were a dinosaur, my love, then you would be a T-Rex. You’d be a small one, only five feet, ten inches, the same height as human-you. You’d be fragile-boned and you’d walk with as delicate and polite a gait as you could manage on massive talons. Your eyes would gaze gently from beneath your bony brow-ridge.
If you were a T-Rex, then I would become a zookeeper so that I could spend all my time with you. I’d bring you raw chickens and live goats. I’d watch the gore shining on your teeth. I’d make my bed on the floor of your cage, in the moist dirt, cushioned by leaves. When you couldn’t sleep, I’d sing you lullabies.
That was pretty powerful. And not at all where I thought it was going.
I love this story. And I love this comment someone left about the story on Facebook: ” “This is such an amazing story. Rachel Swirsky is brilliant. Simply brilliant. I wish I could erase it from my memory so I could read it again for the first time.”
Gorgeous. Simply gorgeous.
Grace
Wow. That was really well-done. And powerful. Thank you.
That is remarkably good. Is it connected at all with the song “If You Were a Bluebird,” or is that just one of art’s awesome coincidences?
I think the “If… then…” rhythm is just sort of a natural poetic repetition thing. There’s also a series of children’s books that uses it.
It’s a fundamental building block of computer programming, too. I wonder if its an English built-in or a human built-in? Not to divert from the ‘Mandolin is wonderful’ theme of the thread. ;)
It’s not just that it’s a gorgeous story; it’s also that it’s so dead-on accurate.
This is such an amazing story, both in how much beauty and how much sadness it contains.