Fiction

James Callan An Otherwise Quiet Space Beneath the sheets, my four-year-old kneads my thighs with his feet. In his sleep, or semi-sleep, the many long minutes leading up to it, he grips my leg hairs with his impossibly hot,…

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Mike Gray The Stoic Birds are starting outside already, somewhere in the languid cool. My arms stretch overhead, body sleeved in fatigue, tired skin luxuriating beneath the sheets. A good day to silence the alarm. Burrow and nestle. Be…

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Tiffany Sciacca P.F. 1982 10 was a reasonable age. Old enough to appreciate the glow of a firefly in the dark cup of your best friend’s hands. Wishing through her fingers for longer summers, longer legs, less pain. Behind…

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Breena Clarke Mama Ascended I have communicated with those who would know. Mama and Papa and Harold and Alice were welcomed in the afterlife, following their harrowing deaths. Their souls were luminous. They said that Mama ascended in the…

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Naomi J. Williams No Doors When they had been stuck indoors for a very long time, the children asked if they could play outside, just for a little while, and the mother relented because she wanted to be alone for…

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Muriel’s Cyclone Kathy Fish It begins with a snowman who catches Muriel’s eye. It begins with Muriel standing at the drawing room window of her tiny home. The winter cyclones, once rare, are now common, fierce as lions. But…

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The Return Tara Laskowski Our child was there, and then she wasn’t. A reverse birth, if you will. She was there, and then she went back inside, back to the lava-lamp-like existence, floating, warm, head upside down and skin…

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Sparrow Mary McLaughlin Slechta Juanetta passed the abandoned house every year since third grade and paid it no mind. She didn’t pass close because now she was in high school, she walked in the street. But one afternoon, when…

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Honesty Sherrie Flick The steam rises, it’s a choir rubbing up my fat belly, then swirling to a hallelujah at the ceiling. Thirty-six weeks. I’m an island of flesh in this clawfoot tub. The water laps at me each…

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Feral Things Rosie Forrest When the siren first sounds, I am grateful to be settled in the basement, or perhaps the siren sent us to the basement during dinner. It smells like lavender dryer sheets, and my tongue works…

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My Mother in Corners Claudia Smith I believed my mother was water, my father fire. Swarthy, salty-sweat, flash-fires she soothed and tempered. She scrubbed the hardened soap from the corners of sinks and counters, the pee from the grout around the…

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Assumption Emma Bolden The snow stopped before I was born, but I was a girl before the rain started. That was when I had a different body, all baby fat and fast flashes of motion that stilled into sleep.…

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Dorothy Rice HOME MOVIES Grace arrived home and lingered in the darkened hallway, unnoticed. Her nineteen-year-old daughter, Lucy, home from college for the weekend, sat cross-legged on the floor, too close to the TV, hands in her lap,…

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Jacqueline Doyle CHEATED When Dina arrives at the Social Security office at 9:15 am, clutching the envelope stamped URGENT, there’s already a long line at the door and no seats left inside. The waiting area looks more like…

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Sarah stopped rocking; a branch broke off in the wind, rolling down the roof, or did the lights flicker? She shuddered; she had a childhood fear of wind, of things unseen. How long until the power goes out? The book…

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“Mommy!” “Don’t step in the paint!” “Mommy, look – look!” “Shhhh. I’m working.” …. right in the middle… Lost the line, color’s mud. “Alright, what?” Ow, too sharp! “Never mind.” “Whoa. OK. Where’s Margie, isn’t she taking care of you?…

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