Señora by Juliet Kahn

Señora

by Juliet Kahn

She survived the revolution because a jet of ionized gas penetrated the Hughes Nebula on the day she was born, producing a perfectly golden Herbig-Haro object. She survived the revolution because she let Che walk into her sitting room without shoes. She survived the revolution because she tottered across the square at dawn and nobody could tell her tights were halfway down her ass. But no, actually, truly, what they don’t want you to know is that she survived the revolution because she knew how to lie. She taught me. You cough it up as a solid, cut it into quarters, then swallow it back down with a quart of bleach. Vomit the slumped, chymic mass back out after four days. Sculpt it into a frieze; hers depicted Delilah with her hands full of hair. Bake it at 425 for half an hour and let it cool on a wire rack. She served it on melamine. That was her gift. Nobody talked about the stars or the coffee or even her legs until she’d been in the ground for two months. Nobody talked about the revolution at all. They talked about the plates.

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Juliet Kahn is writer and editor living in Boston. She has been published or has work forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Uncanny Magazine, and The Comics Journal, among other outlets. Her first graphic novel, Fabiola & Ylini, is forthcoming.