When I Was a Child, My Mother Wobbled into My Bedroom

Ellery Akers
This is the only reason forgiveness is possible. I’m not good at it. But I know about it; I can write about it.

A Fish in the Night

Bailey Bridgewater
The fish sailed through the window, a silver knife in the moonlight, to land on the duvet in silence. The sisters woke simultaneously. Recalled years later, one remembered it as aqua, the other as a red thing streaked with orange.

Tinnitus

Eileen Vorbach Collins
Last played the day she died, her flute collects dust in the attic—the whisper of her breath still trapped in the hollow of it.

Rewind

Yasmina Din Madden
The summer my mother is dying of cancer, her collarbone looks like a wooden coat hanger and the soft, flowered pajamas she wears look almost empty

The God Tree

Elizabeth Hazen
The last punishing storm of summer brought down the God tree—so called because of its age and enormity and because someone had carved “GOD” in the bark

Somewhere Along the Line

Curtis Smith
Somewhere along the line, my heart stopped functioning properly. Its mechanics sound, its wiring not.

Tenancy

Emily Hall’s
On the last day in our rental, my husband and I begin the work of erasing ourselves.

Swimming Lessons

By Allison Har-zvi
What I remember of the 1996 blizzard: five years old in suburban New Jersey, I followed the neighbor kids out into deep snow. One girl declared we would have swimming lessons.

Der Sachsenspiegel

By Danielle Lenhard
In "Images of Rape," Diane Wolfthal describes a 13th-century practice for litigating rape. If a woman is raped in her home, who goes on trial? The person who raped her? No.

Extinction

Sydney Lea
Everything could evaporate. Goodness. Malice. January. August. No notes played or sung, no modulations.

Timestruck

By Myna Chang
There’s a split second, after the ignition catches and the radio blasts out a loud loud song from high school, when time strikes...

The Hill

By Hannah Marshall
I never learned to flatter, to dove like a wisp of white grace, instead challenging boys to footraces and tackling them into grass stains...

Wait

By Alisa Williams
In the bare branches of the hedge outside my window sits a cardinal, his handsome red coat fluffed against the wind and flakes of snow that drift from a clouded sky.

My Lithuanian Holocaust Survivor Grandmother—

By Tamara MC
BEFORE: Hot water burbled in samovars. You strolled cobblestone streets, clicking your heels. DURING: You sipped grass soup.

When your son, who hates everything, who even hates playing sports,

By Amy R. Martin
... asks to play Ultimate Frisbee, you drive him—begrudgingly—to practice. The field is green, squelchy from morning rain. The sky like a Dutch cloud painting.

Coffee Drinks

By Cynthia Belmonto
Twenty-two, I was with my first lover, not college-girl exploring but the real deal.

Struck Silent by Whalesong

By James Claffey
The morning of my mother's last day on earth the nurses didn't notice her waif-like frame slip out the door...

Hunger Pangs

By Rachel Nevada Wood
We are sitting in the kitchen when I ask her if she still loves me. As she answers, she begins to remove all of the things I don’t like from a paper container of fried rice —the peas, the carrots, the chicken...

Centum

By Vimla Sriram
Her kitchen appears unused. No plantain peels huddled in the corner. No orphan mustard seeds – until she wanders in between medication to make adai for her American grandson.

A Gray Inchworm on a Gray Sidewalk

Michelle Ross
How easily the runner could have crushed it. The inchworm’s camouflage, which conceals it from predators, makes the inchworm vulnerable to the human jogging along neighborhood sidewalks, the human who does not intend the inchworm harm.