By TAPTI SEN Kneel. A light touch on your temple. Rise. Kneel: Touch your head to their feet. Your knees sting against the cold marble. Your fingers brush their toes. Seconds pass. Hours pass. You hold your breath, trying not to look at curled up toenails, worn with age. Laughter up above you. Shoulders tremble….Continue Reading প্রণাম (Blessings)
Category: Fiction
The Perfect Man
MACKENZIE DUNSON
A row of homes. Perfect homes, like they were pasted from the pages of a catalog. Sprawling white picket fences ran over the hills, connecting the houses in a puzzle, endlessly together…Continue Reading The Perfect Man
Island of Reverence
WILLOW DELP
The dictionary is wrong. The dictionary is written by parents and upright magistrates and kings all ill-acquainted with true reverence, the reverence that makes you sob and beg and wail and grove…Continue Reading Island of Reverence
Wonderful
ANNIKA BAJAJ
Swinging my legs in technicolor, fourth-grade, all-purpose classrooms with history on one side and “World Weather Map” on the other, I stared down the boy sitting across from me…Continue Reading Wonderful
My Achilles Heel: Intro
CAROLYN THOMAS
I lay in bed with my eyes shut as the prison alarm assaults my ears. Nothing serious is happening. The warden just wants us to know that it’s 6 am and time for us to stop laying on our asses and start doing our jobs…Continue Reading My Achilles Heel: Intro
Veneration
EMILY WYKOFF
I’ve loved and lost and respected you / Things I never thought I’d say / I never wanted to love you / Nonetheless, the adoration found a way // They say that love is a choice / But, for you, it felt like falling…Continue Reading Veneration
The Water’s Not Waiting
GABY WEAVER
His home sits on the edge of a cliffside. It had once sat a few feet further from it, but the sandstone has eroded in his lifetime. He rests on a rocking chair, the ocean view unobstructed in front of him…Continue Reading The Water’s Not Waiting
How to Teach Your Younger Brother How to Fly
SARAH WU
You scream the first time you fly. This is only okay if you practice in your own room. You start from the top of your dresser and jump. That way, only the walls stare at you as you bloody your knee…Continue Reading How to Teach Your Younger Brother How to Fly
A Secret Door
KAELA LIU
We crossed the corner into an unfamiliar cul-de-sac. I had long since lost track of where we were walking, preferring instead to mindlessly track the rhythm of my pace with respect to my brother’s…Continue Reading A Secret Door
Palm
M. LAWSON
The assembly line continued: the other angels carded the wool, dip-dyed it pink in the great tin pot on their table, and fed it into the spinning wheel, which they wound on a cone that F— knit…Continue Reading Palm
Observations at the Gallery
JACKELINE FERNANDES
I experienced the soft colliding of bodies as more of a pleasure and less of an annoyance. In the crowded gallery, I immediately made out the sound of the bass, the piano, the drums…Continue Reading Observations at the Gallery
Faith, Fear, and Finding My Path
PHO VU
For those who are brought up in Asian households, “reverence” is like “respect” but with a higher level of intensity. In case you are Asian but do not see the word that way, my statement merely stems…Continue Reading Faith, Fear, and Finding My Path
Addiction
SEBASTIAN PAREDES
He drinks coffee. He embraces the bitter liquid. He does not care that it burns the roof of his mouth. He does not care that he can see his hands trembling. He does not care that he can feel his body shaking….Continue Reading Addiction
Sketches of the Past
DAVIS RENNELLA
To remember is to live again. It takes a collaboration of our powers of feeling– living in the raw sensory and emotional records imprinted on our bodies, combining them with awareness…Continue Reading Sketches of the Past
Water Beneath the Bridge
WILLOW DELP
The water was brown. / The Brabantio family had adamantly tried to ignore this fact – even the more progressive members politely refused to comment. …Continue Reading Water Beneath the Bridge
Blueshift
JACKELINE FERNANDES
I’d like to imagine my mother spiraling in space, a constellation of the galaxy Andromeda, blueshifted, moving against the force of time, that force which causes the expansion of the universe….Continue Reading Blueshift
dead on arrival
M. LAWSON
There was a sale at Ace Hardware today: forty percent off washers, so Ophelia walked home with tiny metal discs pinging around in his coat pocket….Continue Reading dead on arrival
A School Day along 城門河
PRISCILLA LEE
An old man with his fanny pack radio strolls by […] One of the girls sweats past him and wonders if swinging her arms like that would propel her forward in this deathly test of fitness. …Continue Reading A School Day along 城門河
Stars Fallen From The Sky
EMILY WYKOFF
A blonde woman stands on the Brooklyn Bridge, waiting. Lifting her hand, she brushes a strand of perfectly curled hair into her scarf. She waits patiently, eyes staring off into the distance. …Continue Reading Stars Fallen From The Sky
7-11 Parking Lot
ANNA WETZEL
I don’t usually give bums money because I know they’ll just use it on drugs. I have such profound empathy for those experiencing drug addiction, and I would hate to enable such a vicious cycle….Continue Reading 7-11 Parking Lot
The Three Sisters
ELEANOR WALSH
Once upon a time in a land far, far away there lived three sisters. The oldest sister had long, dark hair and knuckles that hissed when they were cracked. …Continue Reading The Three Sisters
Braid Us
AWA DIOP
Adja parts the last section of hair with the rattail comb to hook in another box braid. She’s working on the last two braids of Michelle’s hair, a first-time customer. …Continue Reading Braid Us
Wildflower Humans
BRYAN FLORES
The entire town mocked him and some threatened him with pesticide when he approached, but no one had the heart to tell him that his father was not a wildflower human….Continue Reading Wildflower Humans
Combustible Potions
ANNIKA BAJAJ
We met that night on a drawbridge, in the rain: you with golden hair plastered to your face, tangling up in long eyelashes your mother likes to call ‘ladylike’ and you tend to label as ‘inconvenient.’ …Continue Reading Combustible Potions
Fishing Hole
LELAND CULVER
The fishing hole was bigger than it should be […] careful examination of the clean cut into three inch-thick featureless ice would reveal that the hole was not merely bigger than regulation…Continue Reading Fishing Hole
Crossing into Minds
CAROLYN THOMAS
[…] even though her mouth wasn’t open. Henry still heard his mother’s voice in the ugliest most peculiar way possible shout, “I hate him! I want to kill him. I hope that bastard dies in his sleep.”…Continue Reading Crossing into Minds
Welcome to Earth
DAVIS RENNELLA
For this solitary space traveler, what had started as a bold expedition to new horizons for his people had become a disorienting journey through a galaxy…Continue Reading Welcome to Earth
Disappearing Bridge
By ANONYMOUS
A small stream bubbles below a little bridge whose boards creek disconcertingly when stepped on. Surrounding greenery hums in the wind. Time slows down here, or perhaps doesn’t exist here at all. …Continue Reading Disappearing Bridge
Reification: A Question in Serial
ESTEBAN SANCHEZ
I walk with you through a field of wild grass on a path laid out for us by others. Dandelion seeds float slowly, discernible against the blue sky, like white snowflakes that fall in other parts of the world….Continue Reading Reification: A Question in Serial
Bridges
MIKAYAH PARSONS
She hugs her arms to her chest, wearing a white baby tee and velvet black lounge pants, dangling her legs over the edge of the bridge when I join her. …Continue Reading Bridges