Into Your Sun-Blessed Life

I have a new story out today.

It's a novelette, and my first new publication since 2021, if you're counting the stories that are only available in my collection. (If we're going with stories published on their own, the last one was in 2019). That means 5+ years have passed since I've had fresh words out. I know what I was doing with that time (the novel, of course! And life), but it's pretty fascinating to blink and realize it's been so long.

Publishing moves slowly, though I moved slowly with this one, too. I wrote it in April/May 2023 for the Sycamore Hill Writers Workshop. After, I let it sit for a long time, since I was focused on finishing my manuscript. I remembered it in early 2025, did some slight revisions, then tried selling it. It got a few rejections, before Jonathan Strahan kindly accepted it for Reactor that March. It's finally out today.

You can read it on Reactor Mag here.

Some notes about this piece:

• I got the title from a Carolyn Forché poem: The Notebook of Uprising, Part X, in her collection The Angel of History.

• I didn't realize that specific line actually comes from a different poem, The Last Poem by Robert Desnos:

I have dreamt so much of you,
I've walked so much, talked so much,
Loved your shadow so much
That I have nothing left of you.
All I have left is to be the shadow among the shadows
To be a hundred times more of a shadow than the shadow
To be the shadow that will come and come again
Into your sun-blessed life.

More here; this translation was of the line dans ta vie ensoleillée by Carolyn Forche. It's actually in the notes of her collection, so deliberate use on her part. If you Google the poem, you can find the original French as well as other translations. Here are some variations of that line: into your sunlit life; over the sundial of your life; into your sunny life.

• The plot fell into my head (a rare occurrence) when I was listening to a reading of poetry in translation at the McNally Jackson in Seaport. It reminded me of being a very passionate teenage poet, and how so much of my identity growing up was tied to my academic record. It also made me think about how I'd probably struggle to translate in my native language, since my English is so much better than my Tagalog.
• That initial thought fit in nicely with a bigger project I've been noodling on, about empire and faith and scripture, and belonging to a people that get colonized over and over. I'm still working on the bigger project, figuring out what I want to say, but it's nice to share a piece of it.

I'm very fond of Dea (I'll always be fond of high-strung self-serious honor students, cough). I hope you enjoy reading her story too. If you did, and you're so inclined, I'd love to know about it—short fiction writers so rarely hear about what readers think.

I'll be back with the next newsletter before the end of the month.

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