Matthew Young Every night I cross a bridge. Every night I cross myself & ask to be forgiven for what I have & haven’t done. Father, Father, Father. My first confession was at eight...
Chey Dugan In the parking lot of Thrive & Blossom, I scratched the stubble on my neck that I had been too lazy to shave away that morning. On my day off, I didn’t have...
Lizzy Ke Polishan peels. My father was a hoe and my mother was a rake. My brother, a fishbone; my sister, a crushed egg. I loved the dirt so much I turned it into my shoes. I loved...
Chris Edmonds We went once to see our father in Crawford, that spring he’d been hired to paint the church steeple. We told our mother we were taking a long bike ride around the lake and maybe...
Kate Kadleck Remember when we named ourselves after condiments? When you licked the lamppost in front of my house? I can’t, for the life of me, recall whether (and if so, for how long) your...
Kelly Murashige The baby has been crying for what feels like three days straight. Mari, for her part, has joined in intermittently. It isn’t just the stress of being a first-time parent. The pain....
Erika Niemi “Well, the real trick to being happy is to kill yourself.” He spoke out one side of his mouth to keep the cigarette he’d just bummed in place while he brought up his lighter,...
Edward Pretty “I’m building a town,” he says with an assuredness I was drawn to. “I’d like to visit,” I say, and write my number on his receipt. I watch him leave, carrying his ten kilos...
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...