Category: Fiction

by Laura Hartenberger       Six hours after my sister’s plane departed from Tokyo and three hours from its scheduled arrival in Vancouver, oxygen masks dropped from overhead. It was just before sunrise and the cabin was quiet and dark.      My sister was asleep, of course. She was proud of her ability to sleep on planes,…

by Mary McMyne       As I extract myself—muscle by muscle, inch by inch—from my husband’s embrace, my breath catches in my throat. I’m afraid each small sound will wake him. The scratch of the straw-mattress beneath my knee. The thud of my feet on the floor. His eyes stay closed, as I slip from our cot.…

by Kelly Lynn Thomas Insomnia Is My First, Middle, and Last Name March 21, 5:13 a.m. I have tried every sleep aid on the market. I have tried every brand of recliner commercially available within the past fifty years. I have tried leaving the vacuum cleaner on next to me. I have tried white noise…

by Jill Winsby-Fein       My father is coming to dinner.      Tyler is there at the stove in his silk kimono, charring bread on the flame. It is morning, spring, and the house is disheveled and peaceful. The walls are white in the kitchen but glow yellow. The dust ambulates midair.      He hands me a piece of toast, and…

by Katie Cortese       Because I once wanted to be a veterinarian (until bio lab), because I flirted with Buddhism (until I spork-speared a tick at Big Bend and felt only relief), because I genuinely love animals, especially dogs, especially floppy-eared, velvet-snouted, clumsy-pawed snugglers like my boyfriend Amit’s beagle mix—I’m the last person I’d expect to…

by Sean Bernard All this time, we’d been together, and then suddenly we were told to be apart.      We were we, an us, a gathering. All spring long we were a swarm of bees, bouncing through the plum blossoms; we caravanned as camels across the Sahara, we lounged on the front porch, a kindle of kittens.…

by Kim Ravold You are nine years old when you begin your piano lessons. You are twelve when you hear of the first successful grafting of a cybernetic arm on a human body, the innovative crossing of nerve endings and wires that can let a man feel the terrain of the earth on the sole…

by Will Ejzak 1.       When I was a kid, I always let go of balloons. At first, it was by accident: I was a spacey kid with shitty motor skills, and holding on tight to a balloon string was too much to ask of my fat little hands. But it wasn’t long before I started…

by Alexandra Noe       The car started turning up just after I’d been accepted and received my uniform, which differed from the one I’d worn before as a postulant. For ten months I’d been confined to a starched white, button-down shirt and a black, pleated wool skirt, longish, covering my knees. The stiffness chafed against my…