Read or listen to Rachel Swirsky’s free online fiction, or buy her collections, singles and anthologies.

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“Wake Up, I Miss You” in Apex

That morning, there was a white rose on my windowsill, and my heart cracked. 

How? I wondered, and chastised myself for wondering. There couldn’t be another message until tomorrow. I wondered anyway. Throughout the day, as I patched uniforms for the occupying armsmen, and baked bread to bring my neighbor with the broken leg, and scrubbed every floorboard in the house, I wondered: how?

Quick? Painful? Bloody? Horrible? Unlucky? Slow?

How had my brother died?

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“Wake Up, I Miss You” in Apex

 

Terra stands alone in the middle of the room, staring at nothing. She moves sometimes like someone dreaming, but never reacts.

My poor sister, locked in her own world.

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“Innocent Bird” in Lightspeed

 

It began with Shoko finding feathers in her bed. It was her third year of high school. She’d just turned seventeen.

She was falling in love, and her wings were coming in.

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“Thirteen of the Secrets in My Purse” in Uncanny Magazine

One: My lipstick.

The shade is Heart’s Blood.

Morbid, if you ask me.

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While these stories envision pasts, presents, and futures that never existed, they offer revealing examinations of humanity that readers will find undeniably true.

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