TangentExpress

Reputation is heavy, an expensive coat draped over your shoulders by your friends, your family — such an honor to wear — but what they don’t know is how the dampness clings to the wool inside, leaking down your back, from the sleeves just as slime streaks down a prison wall — on the outside, cool and glossy, on the inside, hot and sweaty — but you can’t take it off, because you’ve got nothing but tender infant skin beneath, and do you want to stand naked before the world —? Stripped of that trust lying across your shoulders, that collar squeezing your neck, like a snake, alwa

When I entered the marketplace, my lungs seemed to shrink in my chest as I was enveloped by nebulous, chalk-colored smog. I did not falter in my steps, but I walked slowly, peering about me as though I were in a dream. The sun overhead looked like a molten chunk of white gold, turning over and over in the heated sky. It burned through the ghostly haze in such an overbearing manner that the townsfolk seemed loath to lift their eyes any higher than the brims of their hats. The hard cobblestone pathways were laced with cracks, and plumes of dust rose out of them furiously whenever a wooden cart clattered and clacked over them. I saw a watermel