ROCKING THE CRADLE • by Swetha Amit
I am not sure how long I have been dead. Perhaps a month. A year. Or maybe even a few days. I can’t tell. My brain has been fuzzy lately. However, I do recognize my home. I am in my… Continue Reading
perinatal loss
LEILA • by Meagan Chandler
When Nurse asks if I want an epidural, I nod my head. Why hurt any more than I have to? I’ve dreaded this part for months. Those nights I laid awake with little feet striking my ribcage and wondering if… Continue Reading
NO ONE IS EVER SAFE • by Keith Proctor
When Gray didn’t work the night shift, he took over bedtime duty from his wife, tucking in Dylan and telling him a story. Gray sometimes got carried away, veering into realms not wholly age appropriate. Tales of changelings and tricksters,… Continue Reading
JUST IN CASE • by Tamara Miller
My first thought was to lie, and spent a few moments dreaming up common household emergencies like an overflowing washing machine or a broken refrigerator. But Marla was one of those sympathetic-but-also-kind-of-nosy bosses and usually would look the other way… Continue Reading
THE ENGLISH-ONLY RULE • by Ted Lietz
Hania grew up in a southwest Detroit neighborhood where most people understood English well enough to follow radio broadcasts of Joe Louis fights and fireside chats. But they were far more comfortable conversing in Polish. It was the language of… Continue Reading
OUR LIFE IN INK AND SKIN • by Jake TS Wryte
Samantha etched the white oak onto her hand and arm: her wrist and forearm the trunk, her fingers the branches, fingertips the leaves, and on her palm the date and our initials. She wrote our first kiss inside her upper… Continue Reading
CONCEPTUALIZATIONS • by Albert N. Katz
Since the most recent late-term miscarriage, I could see Janet falling once again into depression and the twilight world she entered when under stress and uncertainty. And she was frightened, clearly frightened, about what she would learn at the forthcoming… Continue Reading
WATER’S EDGE • by Sarah Hilary
It’s gritty at the shore, gets between the toes. The lake waits, the skin of it blistering under a low-slung sun that makes mirrors of flat pebbles, the fastenings on bikinis, metal bottle tops. You think you see the sun’s… Continue Reading
CATHERINE • by Joseph Riippi
The playwright Martin Simon is sitting outside an Indian restaurant with a laptop and beer when James, the director, walks up. Martin continues typing — he’s on a roll, finally making sense of the scene he’s been struggling with all… Continue Reading