Identity Theory

10/02/2025

"The middle ground is unbearable,
a Schrödinger’s pastoral where
the landscape flickers in & out of God’s light,
indeterminate so that both the light
& the dark become meaningless."

I’ve seen other worlds in me, alternate histories

02/02/2025

"We are digital soldiers. We are soldiers. I move along with Sugar and RedAngel and Addie and Lannister187 and the rest of the group, walking toward the place where it will happen, where this journey will finally end and all of the people who laughed at me, called me names, whispered in Target or the Centre County Courtroom or the high school parents’ page will finally realize that I was right all along, that I could see when they were blind, that I have been awake for all of us."

God I was asleep for so long.

26/01/2025

"Paws, Lita calls my hands. Removes them
from her body: I brood, pouting while she
jaws. We have eaten what we are told is called flan. It is
thick as congealed blood. I keep to myself imagining
fleets of paper boats in the flooded street. I exist
in a separate time. I am not sure it isn’t borrowed."

—"There Is Nothing So Dreamlike As Being Lost" by Kate Beall

I exist / in a separate time. I am not sure it isn’t borrowed.

19/01/2025

Congratulations to this year's Best Small Fictions 2025 nominees!

12/01/2025

Because night, with its key-shaped teeth, opens me like a door.

12/01/2025

This week's cartoon from Alan Michael Parker.

05/01/2025

"I look into your eyes and see the field
across from my parents’ house, where the crop
changed every other year – I see the light
that lingered on the border of myself."

I look into your eyes and see the field

05/01/2025

“Don’t look,” she says, but she wonders what she would do if he did.

'Don’t look,' she says, but she wonders what she would do if he did.

15/12/2024

Congratulations to this year's Best Microfiction nominees!

25/11/2024

The fall/winter season finale of Micro Monday:

Burning warmth from Holly Pelesky and M.M. Kaufman

18/11/2024

"At the heart of writing this, I really went back to remember how I felt at the time of being a leasing agent: like I was a failure and had no clue what I wanted to or was going to do with my life."

A conversation with the founding editor of 'Rejection Letters,' D.T. Robbins, about his new apartment-complex novel, 'Leasing,' from House of Vlad.

11/11/2024

We are making the move from the website formerly known as Twitter to Bluesky. Join us there.

The lit mag with the corgi. Just getting started here. Read us at identitytheory.com.

11/11/2024

"Penelope only met her grandfather once when she was four years old and she barely recognized him twelve years later at the open casket funeral, but still in his will he left her (and yes it was written out): twenty-five dollars and sixty-two cents; a yellow pillow stained with something purple..."

Penelope only met her grandfather once when she was four years old and she barely recognized him twelve years later at the open casket funeral.

11/11/2024

Which breed do you prefer?
[ ] Chihuahua mix
[ ] The only non-Chihuahua mix, with polar-bear paws and a smile that's half sweet, half salty

You want a furry friend who will… (Check all that apply)

10/11/2024

"She’d entered a world where dreams went to die. The baby latched to her breast like a permanent fixture. She was a milk machine. She was a repository of want. A reservoir of tears until she wasn’t. Until, like all sources, she dried up. Work receded to distant memory. The magazine shuttered. She was not going anywhere. She was going to her baby. Her husband had no patience for this nonsense. He had to get up in the morning and function like a real person. What else did she have to do? She was a mother."

Before she could do anything, the camera clicked.