This week’s miCRo is an international collaboration: It was chosen by a class at Amsterdam University College (under the guidance of their professor Huan Hsu). They had this to say about it:

Milda Gečaitė and Iana Sushko: “The Violet Hour” by Radian Hong envisions a domestic estrangement in which lovers orbit each other like “two large moths” drawn to separate lights. The piece captures a modern relationship hollow from within, echoing T. S. Eliot by turning a home into an unsettling, barren place—a reimagined wasteland. Hong makes absence palpable and emptiness deafening.

Listen to Hong read the story:

The Violet Hour

after T. S. Eliot

Home from work, they meet under the porch light like two large moths. I Tiresias remember when they kissed against the door. Now their winged bodies bump awkwardly as they pass through. They shed their warm shoes, and the tile is cold. Their eyes are Magic 8 Balls in the dark. They crawl upstairs. The man lands on the flat light of a laptop screen, bathes in the glow of a model’s skin. I Tiresias, though blind, know what’s in his browser window. The woman starts eating the bed. Tearing out stuffing from the comforter, the pillows, chewing up the sheet. There is no sound but this loud chewing. Mouth open. It’s the loneliest sound in the world.

Radian Hong (he/him) is a student and writer from Northern California. His poetry has recently appeared in Diode Poetry Journal, Redivider, The Shore, and other journals, and has been recognized by The Poetry Society of the UK.