Endpapers

The following is from Jennifer Savran Kelly’s debut novel Endpapers. Kelly lives in Ithaca, New York, where she writes, binds books, and works as a production editor at Cornell University Press. Her short fiction has appeared in Hobart, Black Warrior Review, Green Mountains Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts, and elsewhere. In 2014, she was selected to study in the Writer to Writer Mentorship Program of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. Leaving the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I submit to the crowd on the sidewalk, keeping its erratic pace as I take a left onto Fifth Avenue and walk four blocks to catch the 5 train downtown toward Brooklyn. When the doors of the train slide closed, I catch sight of my reflection in the window. I let my hair fall over my left eye and observe how the bulk of my coat erases my curvy hips and D-cup breasts. With my new Prohibition haircut, in my jeans and engineer boots, I can almost believe I’ve taken on the male form. It’s still a bit jarring. For the last few years, I’ve been erring on the side of females. On the train, however, somewhere on the border of real life, where everyone’s a stranger and I can hide inside my coat, it’s easier to let myself slip. At the next stop, a seat opens. I sit, leaning back, widening my legs as men do. A woman across the way looks […]

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