MICRO

Praise Kink

By KATERINA IVANOV PRADO | 16 FEB 2026

By Viviane Sassen — Photo by Sergey Zigle on Unsplash

To be a violinist means to obey
and I followed instructions like stepping into
the sun. Rosined my edges. Tore and blunted and bled.
Only practiced on the days that I ate.

Everyone before me traded dreams for survival.
Seamstresses and housekeepers. I inherited
their desire, still in its shrink wrap. I was
so lucky. I got to be great. Couldn’t hold it

for long. Don’t play anymore these days.
Fingers ache when it’s cold. New skin covers
my calluses, stretched like deerhide over a hollow
drum. Tell me I’m good.

Katerina Ivanov Prado’s multi-genre writing has been published in Narrative, Brevity, Catapult, The Rumpus, Joyland, Passages North and others. She has won The Masters Review Emerging Writers Award, the Narrative Story Contest, the John Weston Award for Fiction, the AWP Intro Journals Award, and has received fellowship support from VCCA, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and Reese’s Book Club. She obtained her MFA at University of Arizona and is a Ph.D. candidate in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Houston as a Inprint Mary Gibbs and Jesse H. Jones fellow.

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