CURSES • Katie Harms
A baby bit Janey’s heart and then her heart turned black. Her heart had been a live, beating thing; it had led her first to Harry and then to the white waiting room with little wooden blocks painted in primary… Continue Reading
motherhood
VIOLENT TIDES • by Sagan Yee
General Rasa tilted the battlefield 36 degrees. This made the violet particles representing her army appear liquid, pouring across the holographic basalt to clash with the enemy units pooled below. Victory as subject to gravity, like a shell spine falling… Continue Reading
ABRACADABRA AND OTHER WISHFUL THINKING • by Kimberly Crow
The song on the radio was from high school. She and her friend used to sing it as loud as possible when they drove to soccer practice. She would’ve turned it up, but she was in the backseat of her… Continue Reading
PLAYTIME • by Rachel Allen
I swish the curtains open, and the sunlight nearly blinds me. Typical — on the day it matters, it pours with rain, but on the day after it matters, it’s bright and sunny. Just my luck. I shuffle towards the… Continue Reading
MURMURATIONS • by Andrea Rinard
Mom’s ashes are in the urn on the table, and I smile with my lips at people who hold pieces of her. I am greedy for every fragment, but hugs are extortion. “She never got to be a grandmother,” one… Continue Reading
GLUTEN GIRL • by Nicholas A. White
For years Teresa ate pasta twice a week, on Tuesdays and Sundays, and it had become, she believed, a necessary part of life. She found refuge in a warm bowl of bucatini or farfalle, even after the most hectic days… Continue Reading
WINTER INTO SPRING • by Sarah Crysl Akhtar
In that last hard winter of the war, the farmhouse looked almost like a cabin for the enjoyments of the season. Those gorgeous drifts of snow would have burned your toes to stumps, if you had no boots. No one… Continue Reading