When my son is old enough, he won’t care, because it saved our family.
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Cannibal by Jennifer Sinor
I am eating myself, slowly, from the outside in. Salted skin and blood.
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Shock, Honey by Megan Goss
Mother tries to talk, to reassure her eighteen-month-old daughter, but she can’t get her voice loud enough. Baby’s wails keep cutting out.
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Siento By Sarah Capdeville
I forgot, when it came down to it, that I existed.
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1989 by Lee Ware
My mother always says: I wish you would have known your father before the accident.
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Just Waiting on a Dude by Michael McAllister
He pats the bed and you slide in. You follow his lead—you always will.
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A Man To Occupy My Mind by Elizabeth Morgan
I call them my grown-up friends because these women have translated all of that A-Honor-Roll energy into successful careers as lawyers, engineers, and doctors, while I recently ate more slices of deep dish pizza than my brother and dad combined.
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Josh & Rach 4ever by Rachel Ratner
Perhaps their bodies sensed the heartache ahead, the disappointment that waited—that they couldn’t hold onto this version of reality. So they let go of it. All over the theater floor.
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Of Places and Passports by Shazia Rahman
Let me pledge allegiance to the planet. Let me list all the places I love on a passport that actually represents my sense of belonging and identity.
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Daddy by Alex Ebel
Pacing the halls of my house in a pair of penny loafers so dusty they might have been robbed from a grave, I counted on trembling fingers all the ways my night could unfold.
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Redress by Megan Sweeney
To redress: to remedy or set right; to relieve from distress; to make fair and equal; to compensate for wrong or loss. From Anglo-French redresser: to set upright, restore, set straight.
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Where I Was From by Steven Moore - Winner of the Bradley & Stucky-French Prize
I live in a college town in western Oregon and lately people here have been talking about their small-town Midwestern upbringing like it was a war they barely survived.
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Photo of Dr. Harris Mirkin
The Incomplete By Dylan McGonigle
It was at the end of Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times that I'm pretty sure I heard Harris Mirkin crying.
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Primum Non Nocere: First, Do No Harm by Michael Bishop
Consider for a moment the end of your life.
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Black Widow Spider by Sherry Shahan
I stood in the bathroom where they were strongest, inhaling sprays, sticks, and creams, wondering if my parents even liked each other.
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Panic Attack by Beth Kephart
There is security camera proof of where and how my father fell. The evidence shows that there was no daughter beside him.
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Reconsider the Lobster by Kathryn Gougelet
The black eyes of one of the biggest ones swiveled, probing the air for information about this sterile fluorescent place. Its eyes swiveled in our direction. Fisherman and writers: we were a human blur.
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Dear Daughters, Dear Linda: Essays from 'Terrible Crystals' by Victoria Chang
Saying things others want to hear is easy for an immigrant’s child because language is theatrical.
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Is it Me?, or Withering Sadness, Self-pity, Loneliness, Abandonment, Spiritual Desperation, the Loss of Romance, of Love and of Childhood as well as the more obvious Rage and Frustration by Joe Bonomo
The story of one’s adolescence, choked with romantic notions, wordless dreams far more exciting than tedious daily life, is difficult to tell with a clear beginning-middle-end. And I think Townshend knew that.
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Only Obligation by Kathryn Waring
Obligation, defined as: “an act to which a person is morally or legally bound.” Or, as a verb: “to make someone indebted by conferring a kindness.”
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