Cover Photo: An illustrated of a woman who is an archer
Illustration by Sirin Thada for Catapult

Sunkiller

We wanted to embellish her legend, but now we were only the witnesses of her want.

She told everyone she was a god, but she was just alone.

Lin Ayi, Ama, if you really are the god who pried open the lid of the sky and lifted us out, if you really hunted the suns that tried to sear us on both sides, plotting against the pink inside our bodies, then touch us just once, touch us anywhere, so that we may know only a fraction of all fears, so that we may outlive the teeth of others, so that we will be the last people alive when the warrior aims at the sky and the world unwraps its eyes.

turn-your-spine-into-a-slingshot-and-catapult-you-out-of-your-own-body kind, but, like, the kind that makes you shit out your kidneys. Except that somehow she always knew our names and could summon us with them.

Maybe she’s finally retiring

DatelineThat’s a fast death

What will you become, now that I have gifted you your end?

K-Ming Chang is a Kundiman fellow, a Lambda Literary Award finalist, and a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree. She is the author of the New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice novel BESTIARY (One World/Random House, 2020), which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. In 2021, her chapbook BONE HOUSE was published by Bull City Press. Her short story collection, GODS OF WANT, is forthcoming from One World in July 2022.