Kendra Fortmeyer

Asymmetry

"She arrived at the date and found herself already there."

Mermaids at the End of the Universe

"Surely we deserved this. We were the most beautiful, after all: the universe had looked down and said, yes, you are doing everything right and so I am rewarding you with more."

Waking Up to the Perfect Body (personal essay)

"America: we are doing this wrong. We are teaching our girls to bury themselves while they're still alive."

Supergiant

"We discovered the statues when we moved my grandmother out of her house. They were everywhere, clay and copper and soap and stone, tucked into nooks and teapots and half-buried in the garden."

No Matter

"First, I want to give you this moment. You will understand why in the end."

Octopus vs. Bear

"You woke up female this morning, so now you have a choice: do what other people want, or be a bitch."

Monomyth

"It is with a certain amount of anguish that she goes to the market. Selecting: one eggplant. One half dozen eggs. The smallest jar of peanut butter."

Asymmetry

"Each still considered herself the original one. Neither wanted to accept being a copy."

The Selkie Wives

"The fisherman brings home a selkie wife, but he already has a wife. There is a furious whispered argument behind a half-closed door as the selkie, naked and doe-eyed in the living room, picks up the wife’s Hummel figurines one by one and sets each back down in just slightly the wrong place."

The Third Stage

"In the dream, you are given the chance to undo your cousin's suicide."

X Approaching Infinity

"One hundred and six parallel universes away, she had not agreed to come on the date at all. Five hundred and seventeen, he had not asked her. They had not met."

Leonardo or Lenin or Princess Diana

"You cannot explain this to people at the party: the shock of seeing a dead thing. The small, barking twist of your heart."

The One the Wolf Forgot

"Eventually, talking to strangers is a life skill. Eventually, everyone's a stranger."

The Lepidopterist

"Lying there with the girlfriend soft and vulnerable in his arms, the killer felt, suddenly, worthy of trust."

The Girl Who Could Only Say sex, drugs, and rock & roll

"There was a girl who could only say sex, drugs, and rock & roll. It got her in trouble at school and made her popular at parties."

Things I Know To Be True

"I am leaving the library when Miss Fowler stops me, peering through her glasses like they are windows in a house where she lives alone. She says, 'Charlie, a patron saw you ripping up books.'"

The Pencil-Maker's Wife

"When she first became a tree, she spent her days in grief. There was so much lost to her autonomy. Breasts. Winter mornings with lemon tea."

Three and a Half Billion Chances

"There was a gentle knocking from upstairs, the ghost of her mother that haunted a bedroom closet. At night, Joanie said, she could hear her mother crying, but was afraid to let her out."

Spontaneous

"She wished she had a condition that carried more social currency: Parkinson’s, or Lou Gehrig’s. But a collapsible lung! This was a different thing entirely."

Things We Believed When We Were Small

"'It’s just that—well, honey,' her mother said. 'Men don’t make passes at girls who are on fire.'"

CONTINUE? Y/N

"She has a fan following on the internet. They call her Flower Girl. There are theories: the game designers meant to make her a playable character. She has lines of dialogue buried in the code."

The Most Perfect Breasts in the World!

"The most perfect breasts in the world lived on a pedestal in a temple under thick glass and lots of lasers."

The Week of Small Apocalypses

"I found my husband lying on his stomach, staring at the little crop circles in the lawn."

The Vesuvius Infant

"What you do not know is this: in the final hours of the doomed city of Pompeii, the gods came down from the smoke-choked skies and said, 'Okay. We found you a place.'"

The Monotony of O-Positive

"The vampires weren't sad, exactly. They were just tired of being vampires."

Snake Handling for the Next Generation

"It is your first day of work, and there is a snake on your desk."

The Exposed Nest

"In his final year of graduate school, my father took a job as a bus driver."

Squaline

"The trouble was that the shark had been born a human."

Asymmetry

"She arrived at the date and found herself already there."

Neophyte

"After Paul left, I took a dance class."

X Approaching One

"One day the husband didn't love the wife anymore."

Disappointment

"The blonde had dyed her hair red, so the whole thing was a shambles."

Caving

"We have been in the cave for many months...."

FISH

"There were seven fish swimming in the toilet bowl."

The Monster Under Your Bed

"There is a monster living underneath your bed, and the monster is lonely."