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Still Life
by Sarah Fawn Montgomery She was not prepared for the violence. She did not consent. No one asked, simply forced her legs apart, inserted a finger. She was not wet; it pinched. Later, she would bleed. Seep red and open like a heart, a wound. She tried to look past the face above her to the…
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Our Deepest Sympathy
by Zachary F. Gerberick -For Tricia, her mother, and mine, and for Trinyan I My mother sits at the dining table where throughout my youth we’d spend long, unbending hours assembling jigsaw puzzles, first flipping the pieces right-side up, then, starting with the corners, constructing the frame, the two of us—piece by piece—giving shape to…
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If Birds Can’t Survive
by Kaitlyn Teer Little Brown BirdsWhen my daughter is nine months old, she claps her hands together for the first time while watching bushtits forage in the bamboo that grows along our backyard fence. She stands on the sunroom’s faded sofa and looks out the window, absorbed in the action of birds flying across the…
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There was a boy: Vermiform
by Nathan Dixon I. There was a boy at my mother’s junior high school, which would become my own middle school, a boy whose parents were Christian Scientists. Which made him a Christian Scientist. In the ongoing discussions around consent, we tend to leave the children out. Because I said so. The favorite phrase of…
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Burning a Life: A Memoir of Smoking
by Kate Brandt My first writing teacher, Tom Spanbauer, spoke a truth I’ve always remembered: When we write, he said, we are burning a life. This is the story of ten years that changed me forever. It starts with a lit cigarette, and the story burns from there. Fall 1974: First Drag In 1974 I…
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This is All that Matters
by Amy Kiger-Wiliams My father is having seizures in his hospital bed. The white sheet is drawn up to his mid-chest, his tongue is hanging out the side of his mouth, and his hands and arms are twitching violently atop the sheet. He looks like he might be connected to an electrical current, but the…
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Apple Pie
by Lizzie Lawson The church kitchen. I’m at the rolling table surrounded by Catholic women my grandmother’s age. They peel and mix and roll and crimp. I flatten greasy dough into circles and throw them over open pies heaped with spiced apples and thick pats of butter. “Sometimes it feels good just to sit,” a…
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Homesick Island
by Bea ChangBeacon Street Prize Winner, Nonfiction, 2021 The last passenger towed his suitcase out of the airport, the wheels scraping the island’s midnight quiet. As the door sighed shut behind him, I caught a taste of the air, thick with humidity, from the acres of volcanic mountains and merciless jungles just beyond the city.…
