Ankuin knew she was in a sim by the mineral taste in her mouth. The other tells were more subtle: the fractal pattern of moss on the cave wall, the cyclical rhythm of the rain on wet fronds, and the lyrical birdsong piercing through the dense forest. Most people wouldn’t notice such details, because most people didn’t have a reason to doubt their senses. But Ankuin’s senses were never fully her own.

Baron Samedi pounds the drums and the whole floor shakes. That’s his thing, earthquakes. I heard the Skull Suckers played Santa Monica and the Baron literally brought the whole place down during a blistering solo of “The Devil May Ride.”

so married / by skin / even my fingers rush to study / every dry groove you carve across / my own face, our face, / the single self, splitting into / foil and forgetting

Work wood on a potter’s wheel, mold it, / warmly glowing with oil eased in so it / forgets that it was never soil, never clay.

I wake up at midnight for the third time this week. Some villain’s robbing a jewellery store.

Can’t they get more creative? Maybe try . . . a high-end winter coat store? Or a candy store? Doesn’t make much sense economically, but that’s never stopped a supervillain before. Me? I’m MegaPunch. Just one of your many overworked, panda-eyed superheroes.

As an American millennial, my country has been legally at war for more than half of my life. As a Black person in the United States, and as someone aware of the displacement and genocide of indigenous Americans, I would say the country has been at war with itself since its beginning. War seems as ubiquitous in fantasy novels as it does in the real world.