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I breathed through the tube and didn’t die, and finally I looked down and saw them. All these small fish streaking by, silvery and orange and pink, hermit crabs scuttling around the rocks, tufts of se...

by Mercè Rodoreda, translated from Catalan by Martha Tennent from our Winter/Spring 2011 Issue

My second home in the summer months: the cannery. Here, I stand in the damp cold, spoon in hand, scraping out the spinal bloodlines of salmon until the piles are gone.

The waiting room is a collage of almosts: almost asleep, almost calm, almost able to explain.

Sometimes she’ll circle whatever town we’re in with a wine bottle between her honey-brown knees, passing the bottle to me now and then, tussle my curls and kiss my hand.

Sometimes she’ll circle whatever town we’re in with a wine bottle between her honey-brown knees, passing the bottle to me now and then, tussle my curls and kiss my hand.

We watch as they don’t even glance back at the dock sinking under the weight of all the people who love them too. As the ferry pulls away, I break into shoulder-curling sobs.

He swears that he can feel them sometimes, phantom appendages on his back twitching and thrumming with unlived life. “I swear mummy. I swear.”