Kindall Fredricks When I saw Margo on Tinder, I had only just broadened my search criteria to include women. Having just broken up with Jeremy—another sudsy all-American boy who treated the...
Patrick Kindig The students I teach are more likely to die than most. Horribly & soon, I mean—in battle, or in that skull- numbed moment before. Or simply by a stray bullet skimming the floor...
Naomi Brauner After the moose, I had to reverse down the mountain. The road twisted under my tires until I found a turnout where I could straighten my truck and fly. I practiced the breathing my...
Robert Mata We fished all summer. My father taught me to bait a hook with a worm, then a minnow, then a crayfish. Learning torture like Russian dolls, each body a grosser, wider death. The cooler...
Grant Jensen Young Tommy Jones is building a boat on dry land. The closest lake is a two-hour drive on a good day, but he says he doesn’t care and that he’ll wait for the rain to fall and...
Mary Maxfield My mother taught me silence like a secret handshake, more muscle memory than vow. When asked about her now, a hush entangles fingers, slaps, knocks fists. I say everything but this. She...
Carl Lavigne They say it knows when you’ll die. Everyone’s got a file in every drawer. The higher you climb the more accurate the file gets. Bottom few levels it’s just a sheet of paper with...
Shreya Fadia They say that when you’re pregnant, fetal cells migrate through the placenta, embedding themselves into the interior fabric of you, the process a sort of colonization, the result a...
Rukan Saif The last time I saw my father this close to God was when the doctors cut open his chest and took his heart into their palms and named it lost. So when he declines the call to prayer for...