Search Party

1 Minute Read Time

                   with language from a Daily Mail article


Iceland, 2012: “When the details of the missing person were issued, the woman . . . unwittingly joined the search party for herself. After a night-long operation involving around 50 people, the ‘missing woman’ eventually realized she was the source of the search and informed police.” The police chief later told a newspaper that the woman simply didn’t recognize the description of herself, and (quote) had no idea she was missing (end quote). The word of the day is contronym: a word with two meanings that are each other’s reverse. E.g. cleave means both “to sever” and “to bind together”; ravel means both “to tangle up” and “to disentangle.” Also sanction, bolt, et cetera. Mosquito flicker, a cold case; a railroad town that long has lost its railroad. Standing at the roadside, I imagine what creatures would have eaten me here—this whole state was underwater once. Lightning coughs on the ridge of pine. I look up and imagine the water. While hunting, one should not forget the wind. Never ever forget the wind while hunting.

Sophie Klahr

Sophie Klahr and Corey Zeller are the coauthors of There Is Only One Ghost in the World (Fiction Collective 2, 2023), winner of the Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Contest. Though they’ve been writing together for ten years, they have met only once.

A man with a goatee, smiling and leaning against a window on his left. The window is opened, surrounded by white drapes and revealing a suburban street with trees and a lamppost. He wears a navy, Syracuse Orangemen hat, a red, white, and blue, plaid shirt, and black, square-shaped glasses.

Corey Zeller

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