I return to Sara Majka’s collection Cities I’ve Never Lived In at least once a year for their isolated landscapes and beautifully distilled truths. Like Majka’s narrator, who links these stories together, I moved around frequently when I was growing up. Reading these stories helped me understand the way transience shapes a person’s interior life, as well as the way they inhabit a place. I could have picked any story from this collection, but I am drawn to ‘Miniatures’ because of the subtle way Majka depicts a relationship between two adult siblings whose wounds share the same origins, but present in different ways.

First published in Cities I’ve Never Lived In, Graywolf Press, 2016