By Brendan Todt
“Sarah takes her niece and nephew to the trampoline park and for thirty-six minutes mistakes another boy in a blue tee and shorts for her nephew, who suddenly appears behind her to ask for money for a slushie, which she gives him.”
By Angeline Schellenberg
“She keeps close to the courtyard window she came through, her ears tuned to nurses’ flats slapping down the hallway. Her brother’s shaky hand reaches across the tray for a water glass.”
By Annette Gulati
“She never sees her ailing mother. She only listens to her on the telephone, rattling on about the dialysis treatments, the trips to the emergency room, the stabbing pain in her abdomen. Likely the cancer.”
By Annette Gulati
“She’s six years old when she sees her cat dangling from her father’s hands in the open doorway of her bedroom, a circus act in her very own hallway.”
By Tara Isabel Zambrano
“we took off our PJs, and became the afternoon—our earlobes and neck, our limbs and nails turning pink from the syringe of the sun, asphalt gritting our feet, downstairs our mothers calling our names circled red with curses…”
By Nan Wigington
“History vanishes beneath our mausoleum’s gray rubble, the wedges of marble. No one knows anymore when Aunt Lydia was born, who primogenitor married, when Baby Thomas died.”
By Rob Yates
“She felt like the big, dead moon. There was a penumbra around her. It was all the things she couldn’t quite say to people, mixed with all the things she couldn’t quite think about herself.”
By Amy Marques
“We’re captive, forever separated from our before-lives, not free to leave, but free to learn from the forest we’d once set out to plunder.”
By Sarp Sozdinler
“I went into the woods as a man and came back as a tree. My arms are gnarly and twisting like a branch. My feet are root-like. My heart is bark.”
By Ani King
“My mom has never been one for much crying. Not that she never cried, she was a child once, and sometimes one of my aunts will get the sharp, gleeful look of a wronged sibling about to cash in on a little emotional revenge.”
By Huina Zheng
“Popo is relentless again. She calls Yong daily, asking why fate dealt her a son who forgets her sacrifices.”
By Libby Copa
“Reading the obituaries this morning I came across Jaclyn. I hadn’t thought of her much in fifty years, but maybe I think of her a little every day in some way, certainly I think of her in autumn.”
By JWGoll
“For months, whenever I am outside, he stares, trying to make me feel guilty. The damn dog doesn’t focus on anyone else and I don’t know what I’ve done to rate the attention, but he’s beginning to piss me off.”
By Coleman Bigelow
“Because both my wife and I are writers. Because when I’m thinking about a story, Ellie says I’m hard to reach. Because when my wife is on deadline, I’m the one who does the cooking, and it always turns out burnt.”
By Beth Sherman
“When the hummingbird hovers over the dead coneflower, Dylan stops twirling to get a better view. He’s made himself dizzy, staggering across our backyard, loopy from spinning, and we try to imagine how the tiny creature appears to him, its scarlet throat a blur, its beak vibrating shakily.”
By Curt Saltzman
“At times, I felt I was living with a stranger to see him huddled with his cronies, cocktail in hand, naked to the waist, a carnation lei hanging from his neck like a fallen halo, beneath the softly swaying lanterns, or choosing albums from the personal collection he rarely touched otherwise.”
By Elena Zhang
“Let me tell you about your lao ye, Ayi says. I feel a pressure on my wrist, then a sharp tap as the needle bites into flesh, hovering just above rivers of blood.”
By Elena Zhang
“When I was young, my father loved to tell me the story of the man who buried gold in his backyard.”
By Cheryl Snell
“The image I had almost captured is severed. The ink scrapes dry. My thoughts are caught in the tumble of spun sugar in my brain. It melts and it sticks.”
By Jacob Griffin Hall
“Three and a half months ago, we opened the door and sidestepped the bird. The poor thing had died right at the front step. It was terribly sad, I thought, to die. Even worse with a landlord who’d leave you to the insects.”
By Karen Walker
“But hers were pies with secrets. How much sugar and cinnamon, but also what could be wrong inside.”
By Simon Anton Niño Diego Baena
“My wife informed me that my son had a fever. She was agitated and upset. She stayed in bed beside our child all night with her prayer books and rosary.”
By Craig Kirchner
“Sober Monday mornings we discussed Kafka, Sartre, and you. Champagne on ice in case you visited, knowing you wouldn’t. In between sets you read poems.”
By Catherine Chiarella Domonkos
“Doormen, delivery guys, and nannies call out to Frankie in Spanish when we walk over to the playground in Washington Square. Guapo is the one word I can always make out. Handsome. Grown-ups notice him.”
By Sean Ennis
“Today the class was told, no clapping! It is simply too loud, and there isn’t that much to celebrate. The sound baffles match our school colors, but they are ineffective. The antique windows rattle with applause. If you came here to be congratulated, I’ve got news for you. But if you came here, you’re in the right place.”
By Kat Meads
“XX is not prepared for the future. She does not fail to engage with the oncoming due to indifference, ingrained fatalism, or a preference for surprise; she does not resist preparation on heroic, radical principle. Nothing about her predicament reflects choice.”
By Bethany Jarmul
“My neighbor Dan says I need therapy because today, when a bald eagle landed on my porch railing, dropping a feather on my freshly painted deck, I threw a dart at it. But what does he know?”
By Jon Doughboy
“June in the rustbelt and we’re raving drunkenly down the street trying to catch mulberries in our mouths as they fall, chomp chomp chomp their bloody juice and save them from the sidewalk.”
By Peter Kline
“We’re going to need a younger child. These teenagers are obviously compromised by moneysex and existential dread.”
By Peter Kline
“Why don’t we value them when they’re alive?”
“Why don’t we value ourselves?”