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Oh, what country did your family come from? they’ll ask.

I tell them my family came from space, and they believe me because my degree is in communications. I tell them I will return to space, that this is my last dream.

My poor, dead parents are in space, smiling, even though I have disappointed them. I cannot handle snakes or blood. I cannot be the things I promised. But I will make them believe in me. I will use this business card as a map to find them, and when I do, we will go out for ice cream, and I will explain how nothing went wrong, not really. I will tell them I was happy to be one thing, and they will believe me.

Adam Peterson lives in Houston and coedits The Cupboard, a quarterly prose chapbook series. His series of short-shorts, My Untimely Death, is out from Subito Press, and his work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Ninth Letter, Cincinnati Review, and Indiana Review, among other journals.

 

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