sarah kain gutowski

On waking, she found a pair of small hands cupped her cheeks. The little girl’s face had replaced the moon, and her brother orbited, making small, impatient sighs and grunts as he tried to find, in that cramped space, a better view. The girl moved her hands from the woman’s cheeks and ran a finger […]

The fire in the hearth sparked and fumed. The clocks struck the hour in one long reprimand, their faces closed to further discussion. They ticked the seconds begrudgingly. The whole room seemed angry, as if each object mourned her loss of the little bird, its potential friendly noise and chaos, its brief disruption of stasis […]

That night she woke to find another oddity: during sleep her heart had split or twinned itself, and where one muscle pumped before, now beat two. Her blood coursed through her veins twice as fast as before, and over those paths her skin buzzed and stammered, like wire strung tautly between two poles and charged […]

The season stretched itself thin, weakened by storms and heat. Inside the damp, shadowy space of the children’s fort, the woman with the frog tongue wove baskets and bowls with tight, interlocked laces, while her silk stitches began to fray and lengthen. The gap between her lips widened to where the children could see the […]