by Lavinia Liang

Thursday night, stormed out again, wearing a dress so long and heavy it dragged through the water. The darkness thickened and the shadows refined his face into a stranger’s face. I wanted to reach out and touch him without touching him. I blamed it on his throat. I imagined him inside me and I imagined him being too nice. He told me about growing up with four brothers, all those boys turning—sublimating—into men in the golden California wastes. He pointed at me and said, You’ve got a fawn dancing in your heart. Then he went outside to smoke.

Lavinia Liang is a writer, artist, and attorney. Her writing has been published in The Guardian, The Atlantic, TIME, the Los Angeles Review of Books, AGNI, and elsewhere.