The vibration of the harvest gold phone that hung from our kitchen wall the last Sunday you called. Mom’s fingernails digging into my palm as she yanked the receiver and slammed it in the cradle. The deep divots imprinted on the back of my thighs from the plastic seat covers of our old Buick. That…
Handcuffs On the way to see our boy in the detention centre I was wearing invisible handcuffs. “Don’t try to make them like you this time,” my husband said. He was talking about the guards. The bus lurched and my lunch wanted to become free of its cage. A sense of humor was what I…
We’re excited to honor these stories by including them on our shortlist for this contest. Congrats to the writers who have made it this far in the contest! Your piece has been handed over to our Guest Judge, Maurice Carlos Ruffin!
Fastball
Thinking about how she flung a softball right into my dad’s eye. How with her he was like helluva pitch, girl. How he said she could split the light with her fastball. How he said man, it’s too bad you can’t play real baseball with an arm like that, too bad softball is a man’s…
The Life of the Mother
Content Warning: Miscarriage, abortion Following the meeting with the doctor, there was no thought of a baby shower. Too much rage. Too much grief. The two were indistinguishable, separate ropes twisted into a single noose. Bullshit about stages of grief, the mother thought; it was everything all at once. Including this: she was nonstop clammy…
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