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By Root 1066 0

change my mind. It comes as a revelation, the recognition that Elle is driving this indecisive decision and that it’s Louie who is reluctant to go. I thought it would be the other way around. They’re all scrambled in my head, these roles I understudy, these half-formed characters I inhabit, but I understand now that Elle is frightened of life’s sudden dips and swerves. She endangers herself only when she thinks—sometimes mistakenly—that she’s in control. Louie’s the scary one, the one who Sandrine wants, the one who wants Sandrine. She’s the dreamer, the believer. She’d tattoo a heart on her heart and be true for no reason. She could live on a dime’s worth of hope and make love with a shadow. She’s the kind of girl who’d sacrifice for love.

She’d kill to sustain it.

My Generation

by Emma Bull

Curfew is at sunrise.

Mornings were get going, get up, get dressed, get to school

Get get get

Wait ’til you get home—

No soft kindly dawn to miss.

Sunset brings forgiveness

Smoothing out the flaws;

Even rusted cars shine after dark.

The date moves forward on the fake ID.

Leather, Lycra, latex, linen

Unmarked in them all

Dance every song

Dance full out

And never shake or ache or gasp for breath.

Bass and kick drum put a heartbeat

Inside every dancer’s ribs.

Best friends dropped the needle down

On that track each time:

Hope I die—he sang.

But they got old.

The track wore down, the tape stretched

While new songs throbbed unnoticed.

Ruts grow deep and deeper

Until they reach six feet

Then shovel dirt in.

Life is change.

New songs, new bands,

New stories, new dreams.

Death is one old song on repeat play.

The living, lazy, choose to die

Before the beat stops in their chests.

Greedy for life after life,

Gulping fresh tunes whole,

Grabbing more,

Glorying in each new night, new dance:

I will never die.

Why Light?

by Tanith Lee

PART ONE

My first memory is the fear of light.

The passage was dank and dark and water dripped, and my mother carried me, although by then I could walk. I was three, or a little younger. My mother was terrified. She was consumed by terror, and she shook, and her skin gave off a faint metallic smell I had never caught from her before. Her hands were cold as ice. I could feel that, even through the thick shawl in which she’d wrapped me. She said, over and over, “It’s all right, baby. It’s all right. It will be okay. You’ll see. Just a minute, only one. It’ll be all right.”

By then of course I too was frightened. I was crying, and I think I wet myself, though I hadn’t done anything like that since babyhood.

Then the passage turned, and there was a tall iron gate—I know it’s iron, now. At the time it only looked like a burned-out coal.

“Oh, God,” said my mother.

But she thrust out one hand and pushed at the gate, and it grudged open with a rusty scraping, just wide enough to let us through.

I would have seen the vast garden outside the house, played there. But this wasn’t the garden. It was a high place, held in only by a low stone wall and a curving break of poplar trees. They looked very black, not green the way the house lamps made trees in the garden. Something was happening to the sky; that was what made the poplars so black. I thought it was moonrise, but I knew the moon was quite new, and only a full moon could dilute the darkness so much. The stars were watery and blue, weak, like dying gas flames.

My mother stood there, just outside the iron gate, holding me, shaking. “It’s all right . . . just a minute . . . only one . . .”

Suddenly something happened.

It was like a storm—a lightning flash maybe, but in slow motion, that swelled up out of the dark. It was pale, then silver, and then like gold. It was like a high trumpet note, or the opening chords of some great concerto.

I sat bolt upright in my mother’s arms, even as she shook ever more violently. I think her teeth were chattering.

But I could only open my eyes wide. Even my mouth opened, as if to drink the sudden light.