by Annemarie McCarthy
Next to me, Maisie brings the paper cup to her lips. The lukewarm chocolate has been given the go-ahead, deemed cool and safe enough for her to drink.
She slurps one, two, three. Pauses to blow bubbles into it, her nose stuck tip first into the liquid. Then her head rears back, nose wet and dripping and she releases a yowling scream into the air, a primal sound. Nobody at my table reacts.
Read More »by Bri Eberhart
Once a year, on a crisp autumn morning, fog stretches across the yard, disappearing into the thicket of trees surrounding my house.
The haze is alive, breathing heavily on my neck, beckoning and pulling me in deeper until I can no longer tell where it ends, and I begin.
Read More »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 Audrey T. Carroll
[Author’s note/content warning: As the title suggests, this piece does mention several kinds of trauma, including PTSD, childhood sexual abuse, medical trauma, etc. Nothing is graphic here, and these content warnings ended up becoming part of the piece itself.]
1. You pick up a glass baking dish fresh out of the oven with your bare hands. Your brain tells you it is too hot and should be released. You
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 Julia Anderson
There’s nothing like a drought to make you apricate the miracle that is rain.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 »
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