Have you felt a bit tousled or even spiritually overhauled this summer? The world has been burning, with multiple global pandemics, assaults on bodily autonomy, and the rise of global fascism—to name a few. If the cosmic weather gives your life some shape, or even some bullet points, it’s exciting to note that we have a new moon in Virgo this week (August 27 at 4:17 a.m. EDT), during an exact Sun square with an extra searing and powerful Mars. Could this moment mean that we will collectively be called to protect the gardens that we need to nourish and enact boundaries to protect the parts of our spirit that are emergent and vulnerable? Perhaps the new moon in Virgo invites us to look at what’s in front of us in bite-size morsels. What’s a better bite-size morsel than a piece of flash fiction?

These playful horoscopes each feature a line from one of twelve recent pieces in the Flash Fiction series. Read the horoscope of your crush, your nemesis, your inner child, your favorite DJ—maybe that is all the same person: you? You—like Asian American flash fiction—contain multitudes. We are in awe of you. 

—Swati Khurana
Flash Fiction Editor, The Margins

Everything about Rio is like honey—his skin, his hair, his eyes, his Bengali accent blended into Berkeley cool.
—from “Honey” by Abeer Hoque

Then I went home and filled the hole with water and poured the koi fish in. The koi fish thrived.
—from “Community Ties” by Kayla Chang

She lifts all of us onto her back and swims, crossing lake after lake that flows from her eyes, till we lose count of the lakes, till the lakes merge into a sea.
—from “Jaws of Kulu” by Subhravanu Das

He stole the dark purple crystals from the factory, throwing them into the basin for a dreamy fuchsia pool.
—from “Blue” by Xueyi Zhou

Because the summer feels more hellfire than hellfire.
—from “summer soliloquy” by Jeff William Acosta

Mother was the matriarch of our herd.
—from “Vaada” by Nicholas Dharmadi

I had stories to tell her about my wayward colleagues, the finicky patrons, and the owners and their illicit schemes.
—from “Coffee Shop” by Rachana Pathak

The flare of dawn, illuminating our faces in ways that were forbidden.
—from “Butterfly Lovers” by Fia Zhang Swanson

She watches as curls of smoke rise to kiss the sun.
—from “Lechón” by Stephanie Simpson

I buckled all three pots of flowers into the passenger seat. They rested on top of the box of pears, and during sharp turns the pots wobbled and shook out bits of soil.
—from “Stepping Out” by Kion You

It was just a ghost story. But one we knew well, one that was like family.
—from “Ghost Flames” by Mark L. Keats

I pluck four more leeches, cupping them in my hands, feeling them move against one another, against my palms and calluses.
—from “Iron Deficiency” by Lucy Zhang