Marginal Notes
Adam Hofbauer In the near future, long after the planet’s oceans had risen and the land was habitable only in the jungles of the poles, visitors arrived. They asked the artic peoples to explain to them the history of this planet. The people directed the visitors to a stack of old National Geographic Magazines. This may seem convenient, these magazines existing in this unusual place, as if simply for the purpose of serving to communicate something to these visitors. But that is what really happened. The desert people really did have a collection of old nature magazines. And they showed them to the visitors and explained about how things used to be. How there were snow leopards and apes and power stations. But they were unable to explain to the visitors the many things that had never been written down in magazines, like that day in 2018 when the man who had once owned those magazines had laid down beside his young wife in the dark. How he had looked at his cat in the window, who was watching the trees moving in the soft wind, and felt relieved that the heat wave had finally broken, that he could lie in bed in comfort, if only for a night. How the man had felt how lucky he was to live in that time, with just his cat and his partner, and everyone around him in the same building, with their cats and their partners. And how he had thought that maybe if he had written these things down, someone in the future would have understood. |
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About the Author: Adam Hofbauer’s fiction has been featured in the United States and the UK, including in The Emerson Review, Gold Dust Magazine and The Dead Mule School Review. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. He lives in Philadelphia.