Gloom is a thing with feathers, too: it’s perched over my childhood like a pigeon, flapping its dirty wings and doing that dull Sunday coo that means my friends are out of town, the library is closed, and it will be a decade before I’m old enough to move away.

Kati lives in France, writes short fiction and often thinks about cheesecake. Some of her stories are at vocal.media/authors/kati-bumbera.