By MACKENZIE DUNSON
The last thing my mother made for me was an apple spice cake. She always took pride in it because of the expansive apple tree that was the luminary of our backyard. It has always been the most beautiful thing about our house. The branches reaching for the sky, leaves and breath filling my own lungs, its fruit filling my stomach, and its blossoms filling my mind….Continue Reading Spiced Apple Cake
By SARAH WU
I learned to be wrapped from a young age. Underneath a Christmas tree, I sat below their pine bottoms. Dangling lights brushed my forehead. Taught how presents should be dressed in lovely colors. Taught to be an object, paper wrapping hiding the curve of the natural body within…Continue Reading CHRISTMAS GIFT
By MIKIKO SUGA
Every summer is a tradition of disappearing. There are times to be corporeal, and other times to dematerialize. It may simply be a matter of traversing impermanent boundaries, where one simply consumes what is in front of them. There is no need to contemplate too deeply, because something is always at risk of breaking if I do. …Continue Reading konbini
By TOBY ROSEWATER
Peeling floral wallpaper covers every corner of the senior center’s game room, wilting like an unfurling flower come springtime. The room holds five round tables, and every Sunday, the Austin senior card group fills every seat. …Continue Reading The Game Room
VARSHA PALANIYANDY
When Malin threw open a trapdoor in a condemned warehouse’s floor and ordered Rani to get in, she wondered – again – how her life had gotten so covert in mere months….Continue Reading There Are Many Ways to Starve
KIDANE PAIK
Once upon a time there was a little girl named Red Cap. She lived with her mother and father in a little village on the edge of the Red Forest….Continue Reading Red Cap
MERRICK LAWSON
There is clementine sticky on her fingers. False girl. See, there is a chicken on the stove, a breast that is not unlike her own, and the edges of her are fuzzed alloy like the brass samovar across the room….Continue Reading Citrus Chicken
ALEX WOMACK
My mind is hyperactive. My surroundings — a dull classroom, the homework on my desk, the suburban view from a passenger window — remain in my vision…Continue Reading Scene
CAMILA MASSAKI GOMES
Memory tastes of grape. I thought this as I lay in the bed of my attic room….Continue Reading It Tastes of Grape
PRISCILLA LEE
She opened her mouth and I knew her immediately, tiger-stripe highlights, grown-out gel nails…….Continue Reading MMM, NOT TOO SWEET
JORGE RODRIGUEZ JR
Did it rain last night? No, but it probably will today…
…Continue Reading It Will Rain
MIKE ROSENTHAL
06:43 AM: You clock in. Seventeen minutes early—very safe, but you should have done better…….Continue Reading A Late Night Snack
EDWYN CHOI
There is an old folktale in this village. About a dragon who claimed the forest and devoured men…….Continue Reading THE NAME IN THE SNOW
JENNIFER CUI
Dearest,
I’ve been thinking a lot lately; my life, your life – us, the world….
…Continue Reading Dearest
AIDAN CAHILL
One minute, sunlight. The next, and rain poured in sheets through the trees…….Continue Reading NATURE WALK
MARIAM BESHIDZE
When I was born, my father put his hand inside my chest and took a hold of my tiny heart…….Continue Reading EAT MY HEART
ELIZA BECKER
On Sundays I work the eleven to seven shift and see Louie…..Continue Reading STANDING IN THE DOOR
SOFIA AHMED SEID
There was once an interlude in our days we called snack time……..Continue Reading REMEMBERING…SNACK TIME
LAINEY NOGA
Long ago, in a world untouched by the erosion of decorum, Gouda-locks, a young pastry chef…….Continue Reading Gouda-locks and the Three Éclairs
EDWYN CHOI
Most people are unable to feel spiders, their spindly legs and round bodies. The species does not matter — recluse, widow, trapdoor; they all run and climb the same…Continue Reading Arachnophobia
JACKELINE FERNANDES
After the phone call ends the wet cobblestone beneath my feet zooms into focus as the cracks between the rocks partition my field of vision and I look upwards as the world begins to recrystallize around me…Continue Reading Life after the phone call ends
TAPTI SEN
Decay exists as an extant form of life, or so they say. So even my rotting, motionless body must be continuing to live and breathe. Is it bearable? It could be, if I so wished it. Do I wish it?…Continue Reading Rot Girl Summer
ALEX WOMACK
I came to visit today. / Claire told me not to, that it would only hurt me more. But even if my therapist is normally my first opinion, this time I just can’t agree. Why wouldn’t I want to see him?…Continue Reading Weathered to Sand
ANNIKA BAJAJ
“I think I might be in love with you.” Y leans against the cell wall with hands behind his head, foot tapping against the cell wall. (The other cell wall; the cell was very small.)…Continue Reading Prisoner’s Dilemma
AWA DIOP
Every Sunday at dusk, her moans dragged down our Sunday sun and beckoned it to set. The unnatural sound always rang too loud and plastered to every inch of space….Continue Reading Shooba
BEA AGBI
It began around the time I got back together with Booker. They thought he was too simple, too easy to read. He wants what everyone else wants….Continue Reading Ruby and Rose
BRYAN JIMENEZ FLORES
It was tradition that when I’d finish enough of my work I’d take the rest to the kitchen table and accompany my mom and the chores….Continue Reading Under the Sun
CLARA CHIU
The envelopes began arriving over two months ago: blank white rectangles slipped through the mailslot at odd hours of the day. …Continue Reading Saudade
CRAWFORD DAWSON
She bit her lip. What she was about to do was a felony, or at the very least, a crime. But she simply had to do it. …Continue Reading Haunted
ELIZA BECKER
Korris winced at the scissors’ first zip. Her ear had never been nicked while having her hair cut professionally, but she felt it to be probable, inevitable…Continue Reading Paralyzed Pole