Fiction

On a bright and cloudless Tuesday with the sun shining in the May sky, Conrad H. Moss knelt in his front yard, his fingers brushing the yellow heads of the dandelions the way you touch something you intend to keep. He stayed there longer than was necessary. Then he went inside and found the warning from the town’s city council instructing him to remove the weeds from his lawn or be issued a citation. The ticket would cost him two hundred and fifty dollars, after which the town’s Department of Public Works would eradicate them anyhow. He read the notice calmly, though with frustration and anger working quietly inside him. It was marked WARNING—INITIAL NOTICE at the top, rubber-stamped in red ink. The dandelions growing in his yard were the primary objection; unloved by most but superstars of the weed world, tough, resilient, opportunistic, and very successful

 “Can you come over?” The text across my phone screen lights up faintly within the increasing murkiness of my solitary day. Outside my room window, the city moves at its usual pace. I look at the phone twice, surprised to hear from that person, who I won’t name since there’s a decent chance you’ve heard […]

Forget about Pakistan for a while. You are on King Street, Newtown, Sydney, and here, you don’t see the moon-swallowing powdered horseshit and the smoke of two-stroke auto-rickshaws that choke the sky above Lahore. The winter sky is clear and vast, the stars glowing. The Friday night crowd of merry Sydneysiders is around you. Gay and straight couples slosh around bars and clubs as drumbeats thump the air. It is an important night of your life, and you are here to mark the occasion. You take off your watch and hold it across your right palm. It is an ersatz digital, with its logo already peeled off.