Steven Harvey Like eagle rounding out the morning/ Inside us./ We pray that it will be done/ In beauty./ In beauty.—Joy Harjo I’ve never seen an eagle rounding out the morning inside me, but I...
Keegan Lawler In the woods of North Idaho, black bears and velvet-antlered moose didn’t scare you as much as wood ticks did. Stories you’d heard of ticks gone fat with blood, hiding in hairlines...
Abigail Myers When it became clear that the pregnancy wasn’t viable, the doctor asked what my holiday plans were, a banal question suddenly loaded with urgency; and when I told her, she simply...
Shilo Niziolek “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here together today to look into the face of the river.” — Mary Ruefle The week-long heat wave has finally broken, but before it broke, I forced...
Beneth Goldschmidt-Sauer I had a lucky shirt I wore the whole time. I took it off only to sleep and to wash it in the laundry room at the hotel, where the jungly humidity and the smells from the...
Aida Zilelian “Don’t bother your mother this morning,” my grandmother Shaké said. She had her back turned to us, rummaging for items in the refrigerator. My sister Alice and I sat at the...
Lucien Darjeun Meadows Content Warning: This piece contains discussions of suicide and self-harm All around this Baltimore campus, the tulip poplars are beginning to leaf out in brilliant, foamy...
Amanda Nyren I’m at my desk one morning when he first reaches out. As a recruiter, out-of-the-blue messages from near-strangers are common on LinkedIn, but something about this one feels—I’m...
Aisling Walsh My cervix has been weeping for longer than I know. The pearl-pink nub at the neck of my womb is marked by a lesion which releases a constant trickle of blood. The ulcer was first...
Megan Pillow Here’s a secret: every night when I go to sleep, I put my dog Lucy’s collar under my pillow. When I toss and turn, I hear the jingle of the tags. It was the sound of her in the...