John Lennon’s Ghost

By James Burt
I once went out with someone whose bath was haunted by John Lennon’s ghost. The faint sound of songs he never got to finish came through the pipes.

The Years, The Years

By Diane Gottlieb
When the aides on the night shift drift off to sleep, residents jump out of bed. Tiptoe down hallways to the recreation room. First one in hits the lights.

October Again

By Beth Sherman
Bark peels off the maples. Leaves wither and die, everyone says how beautiful. Sedum turning a muddy green, like rotten asparagus.

Taste Me and You Die

By Chelsea Stickle
In the natural world, yellow and black together mean danger. I’m striped like a bumblebee for the Halloween party...

Inheritance

By Keith J. Powell
I think of my father taking me to see Batman opening night. Teaching me poker at the cabin.

Clutch

By Mikki Aronoff
The way I remember it, your dad was dying, not mine, his purple-blotched feet peeking out the edge of the hospice bed, its cold rails raised against a fall.

Freckle Inventory

By Anslee Wolfe
Freckles scatter across his face, neck, arms. They hide beneath clothing. A large one dots his ear. Five pepper his cheek.

Over Easy

By Erin Dzida
“You go first, I’m still deciding,” I said as the waitress shifted her gaze, working her way around the table.

Unused Magic

By Maureen McEly
There are wishes in my hair, constellations of fluff from dandelion ghosts my daughter blows in my direction.

Settling Into The Rest Home for Ragged Girls

By Anika Carpenter
The island’s breakers rattle windows. Filthy storm clouds snigger, ‘“the jetty is as brittle as your bones.”

I Wish I Could Tell My Dead Husband

By Jamy Bond
That I stole his Percocet stash and then helped him look for it. That I found his suicide note tucked inside his dog-eared copy of Infinite Jest.

In the Psychiatric Emergency Room

By Yu Li
You make up reasons for skipping pills. You must lie because the robins are watching, rolling both paranoid eyeballs, their jaundiced bellies bulging...

I Lived

By Emily O. Gravett
It was the summer of Shakira songs. We danced in clubs all over downtown Jerusalem until 4 a.m. and studied biblical Hebrew for six hours in the daytime.

Common Ground

By Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar
My name is Sara, I say. I’m from India. Never met an Indian with that name, they say. Is it short for something? No, that’s my first name. I say.

It’s Better This Way

By AJ Atwater
The convertible black as night with straight-up fins and a grille like shark’s teeth comes to rest in the bar’s parking lot among long-bed pickups with pipes and lumber and paint-splattered extension ladders...

Jigsaw Puzzle

By Roberta Beary
When someone said, I saw your husband eating out with another woman, he said she’s a colleague and I believed him...

Foreign Countries

By Emily Farranto
When we fell in love, my future husband wrote: Being with you feels like being in a foreign country.

Lullaby for Mariupol

By Stephen Connacher
I remember the chilly winter carnivals at Drama Theater, and the new green and yellow maternity hospital. Neighborhood babushkas gossip among the falling leaves.

Darling at Dinner

By Ellie Prusko
The waiter was staring at Darling, not me. When Darling admitted she wasn't 18, he left her wine glass anyway. He took mine immediately, probably mistaking me for 12.

Your Hair Looks Like Taillights

By Lexi Butler
You talk to your mother in Spanish, your sister in English, and then in numbers to order Chinese take-out. And you love to talk, especially about how you grew up in a one-room walk-up.