[fiction]
You is not you. It certainly isn’t me, although after the initial shock of being ‘you,’ you think ‘you’ is me. Anyhoo, you take me by the hand and we climb the stairs, taking each step as slowly as if each step was a crossing into another forbidden dimension. BTW, ‘me’ isn’t me but the ‘stairs’ are those concrete stairs that appear out of nowhere in Echo Park and go straight back up to nowhere because they were stairs to a housing estate that never got built way back when LA was still being planned into the LA that never got built. I wish… I wish ‘me’ was me and that you are this person I’ve always felt hovering around the periphery of my consciousness, kind, intelligent, reliable, thoughtful and so damn mature that you shock me out of the ‘me’ story. Wait. Maybe it’s better if the ‘stairs’ isn’t that ‘stairs’ but the one in Santorini which feels like Ancient Greece, you know, the one that almost killed us because it was so long and steep, the passageway connecting the cliffside Village of Too Many Tourists to the beach sparking the coast of twilight. I say ‘sparking’ because what’s important in this flash is the restaurant that grilled super fresh fish right on the beach. If you were me, you would know why I use ‘sparking’ and how delicious expertly grilled red mullet tastes and looks and smells and how that was the best meal we had in Greece. At this point I am not me. But you. You are me, the me of this flash, climbing up the stairs that may or may not exist but will always exist here, in this flash, where you are right now, trapped in an insufferable POV. And for that, I thank you.
J.A. Pak’s writing has been published in Luna Luna, Joyland, Entropy, 7×7, Queen Mob’s Tearoom, and others. Come and visit her at