Sue’s Reviews > Martyr! > Status Update

Orkideh’s words were still orbiting Cyrus’s skull..as he walked away from the ..[museum]. Earth martyrs, Persian checkboxes. The difference between wanting to not be alive and wanting to die..
Cyrus’s holey shoes were flaunting something too: his authenticity, his class antipathy, his allegiance to the proletariat—it was..right there at his feet…they were ratty flags made by a billion dollar shoe company…

“So what are you thinking then? A novel? Or like…a poetic martyr field guide?” asked Zee.
“…..my whole life I’ve thought about my mom on that flight, how meaningless her death was. Truly literally..meaningless. Without meaning. The difference between 290 dead and 289. It’s actuarial. Not even tragic, you know? …was she a martyr? There has to be a definition of the word that can accommodate her.

“For as long as he could remember, Cyrus had thought it unimaginably strange, the body’s need to recharge nightly… As if to incentivize the whole ordeal, the body offered you dreams. In exchange for a third of your living, you were offered sprawling feasts, exotic adventures, beautiful lovers, wings. Or at least the promise of them, made only slightly less intoxicating by the curious threat of nightmare.”