by Rossana Segovia
“You’re going to hurt yourself, let me do it.”
My mother snatched the kitchen knife from my hand and pressed the vegetables gently against the wooden board, raising the knife edge to create thin, uniform cuts, forming perfect circles and cubes for the soup she had cooked but would present to the family as my original dish.
Read More »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 Rowan Moskowitz
I have a little demon on my shoulder. Not the type who whispers in my ear encouraging me to do bad things to others like in a stereotypical cartoon setting, but more so one that whispers insults and lies to me. It’s my own personal bully, following me wherever I go and reminding me of all the things that could go wrong. Then? It tells me how I deserve it, claiming that I ruin everything and just bother people with my presence. It makes me feel as if I’m back in middle school sometimes, memories of childish insults being thrown my way all coming back in one quick swift like a gust of wind that’s never ending.
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 Sania
Deep in my notes app, hidden behind to-do lists and funny quotes my friends have said, lies a collection of thirty-seven orange poems.
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