by Katie Coleman
Leena’s coffee mug perches on the counter, telling her, ‘You Are Loved.’ But then she withdraws her spoon and angles the mug to her lips. As she swallows, thoughts of far-flung jungles emerge, where coffee beans ripen, where buildings have fans, and local people sway as they pass by arms linked with elegant partners.
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 »How do you keep going despite the heaviness of the world?
This month, we warmly invite you to send us your thoughts, in the form of writing or visual art or basically anything, on the theme of hope.
As usual, our prompts are only here to help inspire you and don’t have an expiration date, so feel free to join anytime within the open windows of our call for submissions.
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 »Yes, we’re succumbing to the inevitability of a certain date, but hopefully not all its clichés. We offer you this prompt with hopes to ground ourselves somehow in the face of the world, find the right fuel to hold on and fight for better.
So, we warmly invite you (today or any other day of the year) to send us your thoughts, in the form of writing or visual art or basically anything, on the theme of love. Find a few questions to inspire you below.
Read More »by Daisy Solace
It’s 2013. I’m 11, living in Saudi Arabia, and anticipating House of Hades’s release with bated breath, counting down the days. It’s all I talk about, my best friend is getting sick of me. I’m insufferable, and I like it. I haven’t been into Percy Jackson for very long — just about a month by this point, but it’s found its space in my head and settled there.
As a kid who had always felt ALONEALONEALONEalonealonealone, it’s nice to read about a boy who’d changed schools so much that he has no friends, except for the one whose job it is to protect him. It’s nice to read about a boy who knows the truth: that the best people have the rottenest luck. It’s nice to read about a boy who, despite this, fights. After rows upon rows of pleasant protagonists, there’s a certain level of solace (pun intended) in Percy Jackson. He’s not easy. He’s not agreeable. He’s angry, rowdy, and, as Percy would come to say in the musical, impertinent. As a fellow impertinent child, I’m delighted.
Read More »
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