by Mackenzie Dunne
Four years of bittersweet love bubbling back upRead More »
Tag: fiction
Seed
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 »Schroon Lake
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 »Newark Penn Station
by Dave Nash
I saw you waiting at the front of the platform, I inched up closer. I hung behind the other commuters who allowed me anonymity. I strained for a better look.
I saw you on a good day, a lucid moment from my ennui; yesterday I would have put my head in my phone and waited for the train to pull in.
Read More »Hope for the Future
by Ramona Gore
Emi exhaled into the night, her breath quickly condensed by the cold air. She buried her icy hands even deeper into her pockets in an attempt to regain some warmth in her fingertips. Her cheeks had surely turned pink by now and the padding in her thick coat provided little relief from the brick wall she leaned against. Just as she was about to call it quits, he stepped out of the doorway she stood next to.
Read More »Snow Day
by Willow Page Delp
It was cold.
Piper was the embodiment of cold-resistant, sleeping without covers on cool sheets as she sweat through her pajamas. She was always sweltering — tying her dust-colored hair into a ponytail as perspiration gathered on the nape of her neck, slashing off the sleeves of her school uniform, keeping the ceiling fan spinning twenty-four-seven — much to her roommate’s chagrin.
When Opal saw the fan on, she would grumble, retreat into an oversized hoodie, and bury herself in her blankets, like a tunneling animal. Their arrangement was built on the fraught compromise, temperature-wise, but the balance was never mutual agreement — something closer to a ceasefire.
But, this morning, even Piper had to admit it was cold.
Read More »The Madison
by William Cass
The Madison was old, red-brick, and smoke-stained on its far side from the chimneys of a nearby factory that had closed a decade ago. The building’s five stories housed a few dozen cramped, drab apartments, a few of which also served as places of business: a seamstress, a child care provider, an online counselor, a call center rep, a translator. Its small foyer was dimly lit and had no doorman. An elevator occupied most of the wall across from the front doors bordered by a plate glass window that looked out onto the sidewalk and street. A potted artificial ficus stood like a sentinel at the base of the third wall, and a bank of mailboxes filled the fourth.
Read More »Gravity
by Cecilia Kennedy
When the kya, kya, he, he, shoosh, shoosh labor-breathing ended, a tiny thing entered this world on a string. Nurses had to pull her down from the ceiling. I never even got a chance to hold her.
“It’s rare,” the doctors said, “but it happens,” and they rattled off something about the displacement of oxygen in a pair of human lungs and chromosomes and genes and splices of things, but in the end, the outcome was clear: my child would float through the world.
Read More »The Intimacy Of Being Understood
by Smrithi Senthilnathan
“Ready for our movie marathon tonight?” she asks.
I smile. “As long as you don’t put any heartbreaking movies, I’m game. Not in the mood to cry today.”
She punches me softly. “Just because I love sad movies doesn’t mean I don’t know anything else. Today you’ll meet another side of me.” She winked and smiled at me coyly. I shook my head, laughing as I followed her into my room, better known as our den.
“Today I’m choosing the first movie of the night,” I declare, closing the door behind me.
Read More »Tucumcari
by Modesty Sanchez
Read More »With every passing minute, every punitive increase in temperature, every dreary mile of unchanging desert, we were brought closer and closer to our destination.
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