Noora

There’s this story I read one time, some old-school Muslim fairy tale, maybe it was a discarded hadith I guess, but it was all about the first time Satan sees Adam. Satan circles around him, inspecting him like a used car or something, this new creation—God’s favorite, apparently. Satan’s unimpressed, doesn’t get it. And then Satan steps into

The performance of certainty seemed to be at the root of so much grief. Everyone in America seemed to be afraid and hurting and angry, starving for a fight they could win. And more than that even, they seemed certain their natural state was to be happy, contented, and rich. The genesis of everyone’s pain had to be external, such was their

Love was a room that appeared when you stepped into it. Cyrus understood that now, and stepped.

LISA SIMPSON AND ROYA SHAMS

Roya stared down at the little girl, who was now the size of a little girl. Yellow skin, white pearls, orange dress. The bedroom was filling with water. A saxophone floated from under the bed and Lisa picked it up. She started playing a song that seemed to be about the immeasurable mercy of animals, though it had no

Living happened until it didn't. There was no choice in it. To say no to a new day would be unthinkable. So each morning you said yes, then stepped into the consequence.

What formed in Cyrus's mind was a blunt and inarticulable plea to be done, for a reprieve from navigating what had become to him an unnavigable world, to not have to spend the next decade or decades unraveling what it all meant, had meant, would mean. The anger he felt at his mother. The vanished. The abandoner. But, also, the pride he felt for