Something Strange, by Grove Koger

Prose, chapbook, 28 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

We live in a strange world. Our lives are shaped by that strangeness, but familiarity so blunts its face that we no longer see it. To the infant, everything is strange except its mother’s body. We adults apply labels such as “time” and “light” and “gravity” to the forces that shape our existence, but those forces remain absurdly, dauntingly strange. They lie far beyond rational explanation, and we have no path forward.

The world we dream about tonight will be strange, and, should lightning strike as we sleep, the world we awaken to so suddenly will be frighteningly strange. We fear what’s strange—and rightly so—but it lives in the house down the street, lurks behind a friend’s familiar voice, waits patiently on the other end of a phone call. Should we answer? Do we dare?

Grove Koger is the author of Not, a chapbook of poetry; and When the Going Was Good: A Guide to the 99 Best Narratives of Travel, Exploration, and Adventure. He’s also Assistant Editor of Deus Loci: The Lawrence Durrell Journal, and blogs about travel and related subjects at https://worldenoughblog.wordpress.com/author/gkoger/