and I don’t say anything as you drop each strand on the ground and I wonder are you okay do you need help is that good for you as I see patches spread across your head and I know that it’s not good for you, but it must be if you are still doing it...
Willow doesn’t even get the satisfaction of saying Brandon broke up with her. They were never a couple, not officially, their relationship undefined after six months of perfunctory orgasm-less sex (for her at least). Her friends constantly pointed...
My daughter, Chiara, turns five today. I get up when it’s still dark because, if I wait until after the Tuscan sun rises, it will be too hot to bake a cake. I pour myself cold coffee, then I close the windows and shutters to trap the fresh night...
We're excited to announce the three winners chosen by Judge Deb Olin Unferth! 1. Our Father by Theresa Sylvester “This is an astonishing story, revealing so much about the father in a few words, the complexity of his relationships with his children...
Nicole spins, smiles, bites Mark’s lip, and coaxes him from the circle. They make slow, cautious love on the pile of Gore-Tex coats in the den. RJ spins, slips Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein from the shelf and reads aloud. He sobs and sobs and sobs....
Truth or dare: Who did you lose your virginity to? That sorta-kinda-boyfriend I had the summer before college. We both worked at Six Flags. He: the Texas Cyclone. Me: cotton candy. The days: sweaty, sticky. The nights: sweet licks of clove...
Predict the next shape in the pattern. Here is a wolf’s heart. Here is a wooden crucifix. Here is an emerald. Here is one drop of water. Here is a witch’s crushed corpse shoed in jewels. Plunge your hand inside your head and withdraw a fist full of...
When I was a girl, a woman in my town died in suspicious circumstances. I still think about the day of the funeral; the spice of the incense as the priest swung the smoking thurible over the closed coffin; my mother’s black skirt, tight on me and...
Mother first told me the myth of the rabbit on the moon when I was still small enough to listen. How when the moon goddess, dressed in rags, begged the rabbit for food, it twitched, then threw its body into the fire at her feet. The goddess,...
My parents buy my eyes and hair. The auctioneer’s small, doting assistant brings the parts over. My mother sniffs the hair and my father holds my bottled eyes close to his own. They had thirty years with me, but can any number ever be enough? A few...
When the boy’s mother told him to at last get dressed for the pool party, what he heard was: son, revel in yourself because everything in this life is permissible. Beyond the pool, he found the boys gathered around the air conditioner’s metal cage,...
For all that she wants, Janie knows Mr. Neilson will never kiss her. He conducts. When he conducts, his hair whips, his arms fly through the air. His moustache glistens. There are dark rings in his pits. Janie wants to be the kind of person whose...