Tell me a bedtime story in which I don’t float away this time. Kiss my stained glass lips and let me be young again. Don’t say that the crow will gnaw off my kite strings, that God will pump me full of helium. Tell me a story that anchors me to the roots of your laughter, to the doorknob of your attic. It doesn’t have to have a happy ending. I promise not to cry when the monsters creep out of my lungs, or scream when the climax is empty. I just want to imagine myself tethered to your vocal cords, entwined in your thick arteries like a tender knot. Only then can I fall asleep nestled safely in machinery. Only then can I wake up in the morning, and look at the milky sky with a jitter of hope. 

Elena Zhang is a Chinese American writer and mother living in Chicago. Her work can be found in HAD, Ghost Parachute, Exposition Review, Your Impossible Voice, and Gone Lawn, among other publications, and has been selected for Best Microfiction 2024. You can find her on Twitter @ezhang77.

Header photograph by Jen Ippensen
Header artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson