"The Receiving Tower," by Matt Bell

The opening is clear yet disorienting, a characteristic of the poetic language that sustains this story to the end. “Most nights, we climb to the tower’s roof to stand together beneath the satellite dishes, where we watch the hundreds of meteorites fall through the aurora and across the arctic sky. …Once, Cormack stood beside me and prayed aloud that one might crash into the receiving tower instead and free us all. Once, I knew which one of us Cormack actually was.” It’s an intriguing story where memory dims and hope is even dimmer. The ending is a knockout, leaving this reader pondering the mutable nature of consciousness. Read it here at Willow Springs.