by Jessica Tan
The long, yellow bus screeches to a halt next to the curb as you lift your eyes up, watching the doors fan open for the first time this fall. You spent all morning organizing your school supplies, thinking of what your new schedule would be like. But first, you have to make the journey there. And if you had it your way, you would drive there yourself. If you were old enough.
Read More »by Matias Travieso-Diaz
Around the valleys’ slopes the sky is already darkening;
Alone, two larks still soar, rapt in the twilight’s perfume.
Come here and let them flutter; soon it will be their time for rest.
Would that we not lose ourselves in this solitude.
O, utter, silent peace! So deep in the sun’s afterglow!
How weary we are of wandering: can this, perchance, be death?
– Joseph von Eichendorff – Im Abendrot (At Sunset)
Living had become difficult for Felix. He was feeble, arthritic, with an erratic heart and almost deaf. Many activities he had enjoyed in earlier years were now beyond his reach. Driving long distances was too tiring, and his daily runs had needed to be scaled down to strolls. Soon he would be relegated to one of those mausoleums where the elderly are stored awaiting the inevitable.
Read More »by Aigerim Bibol
The world ended on a Tuesday morning. The flames danced higher as the sky was set ablaze with crimson red and smoky black, thick clouds of smoke billowing above. Amidst the chaos, Abigail and Henry clung to each other, watching as the world crumbled around them.
Read More »by William Cass
Carl pulled on his brown cardigan, gripped his cane, and left the house. It was just after 6am, the charcoal sky ink-washed over rooftops to the east. At the end of the driveway, the old man paused. He looked to the left at the streets he’d grown accustomed to taking on his morning walks, then pressed his lips into a thin, tight line, blew out a breath, and turned right.
Read More »by Emily Strempler
“I know you’re proud,” the teacher says, stopping in the hall to deliver this gem of wisdom as she passes, “but I’d be a little quieter about it, if I were you. Boys don’t like girls who are too smart. Trust me.”
Read More »by Eric Vanderwall
The Halloweens of those early years blend together and it seems as if it was one long night, and, as it seemed to my young boy’s mind, the whole world joined in, that world being our neighborhood. It was a long Halloween night, both wet and dry, both cold and mild, filled with expectation and disappointment, all condensed into pointillist moments that, out of the blackness of the forgotten, have, many years later, been brought forth to light. The days of October that preceded Halloween have all faded away, leaving only those few impressions of the month’s final night to encapsulate the entirety. Had I known in those early years how precious those times were and how irrevocably it would all be lost, I would have paid better attention. I would have tried to remember everything. Although nearly all those Septembers and Octobers have disintegrated, one memory of the second day after Halloween, All Souls’ Day, remains.
Read More »by Chey Dugan
I was admiring the aristocratic Grande Dame portrait on a Tuesday afternoon; a day when the Abruzzo Museum of Art History is hauntingly inactive and I’m free from the perturbed looks I get from the usual late-week crowd. I’m reluctant to admit, but somewhere along my embryonic development my Pavlovian wires got crossed and because of these ritual Tuesdays, I could just exist in my oddity. I would thank myself at the end of the week for getting this out of my system.
I was deep within myself and sure I was alone until you interrupted and said, I like what you’re doing with your face.
Read More »by Blaire Baron
It is still dark and the early morning cacophony has yet to greet the day. The others have already left and Washington knows they aren’t waiting for him, not this time. With no Mum to wake him, he’s getting better at finding his clothes in the dark. Washington scoops up a sticky ball of yesterday’s ugali and pops it in his mouth before rushing out of the ramshackle maze. He zig-zags past sleeping mothers and babes. Everything here is laid bare, there are no doors and there’s nothing here to steal.
Some might call it a labor camp but to Washington, it’s home. Out of the maze now, he runs toward the line of humming shadows holding machetes. Washington grins up at one of his uncles.
Read More »by Kylie Wang
Boom.
The creatures in the underbrush scattered as another tree fell, her arms cracking when she hit the ground. The giant had stood tall and proud despite— or rather because of— her age, with her leaf-crowned head facing up to drink in the sunlight, but that didn’t change the way she keeled over and collided with the forest floor: heavy, like a vault door slammed shut.
Read More »by Bill Foley
Dale stood frozen in the parking lot of the Essex Nursing Home like a decorative plant. Where am I? He felt the strong grip of a hand on his elbow leading him back inside.
“Come on, Mr. Malone. It’s time for Bingo in the recreation room,” the attendant said.
Dale tried to resist but the man holding his arm would not be deterred.
“I want to go home. I have to feed my dog, Teddy.”
“This is your home Mr. Malone. You don’t have a dog.”
“No one’s home. I gotta feed him.”
Read More »
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