FICTION
The Bodies by Andrew Potter
Our therapist made us go camping. Her suggestion was to sleep outdoors for three nights and then get a hotel room. She said camping would force us to rely on each other for comfort, and the hotel stay would…
Sibling Parenting & Father’s Day by Shih-Li Kow
Sibling Parenting Ai Ping’s brother said women who habitually declared they found happiness in everyday things were the hardest to please. If a woman required x affirmations of happiness a day, each having an effect which lasted an average…
The Ten Deaths of Mrs. Haverhill’s Second-Grade Class by Sam Berman
I think it matters that her husband was older. He owned his own house when they met. He also owned a coffee shop on Lattimore. And Mrs. Haverhill, then—to distinguish herself from the other long-necked, loose-sweatered girls in the…
Birds x Bees by Katharine Duckett
Esther was sixteen the summer that all the bees in her father’s hives died. Those were the days when she was in love with everything. The curtains in her room, billowing with the morning breeze; the spongy hills leading…
Penny, Barbara, Ruth, Irene by Amy Grote
After three gin martinis, my mother-in-law spits out her teeth. “You’re a cannonball with a credit card,” she hisses. Her dentures glisten like pearls in her palm. Never, she likes to remind me, did she foresee her sweet son…
Flapping Wings and a Shoeless Walk by Sudha Balagopal
My daughter, Savi, instructs me to wear shoes when I go for my morning walk. She says it’s not considered exercise otherwise. I tell her my toes feel imprisoned in shoes and slide my feet into chappals before I…
When You Visit Manhattan on Saturday and Your Boyfriend Who Lives in Queens Says He Can’t Come by Nathan Xie
after Jenny Offill On the hour-long train ride to New York City, you read a book about a divorce that almost but doesn’t quite happen. Your boyfriend says he’s knocked out from miscellaneous paperwork and allergy headaches and his…
House of Cicadas by Gabriela Lee
Aboveground I was twelve years old when I last saw Blanca Esperanto. She lived at the end of the road. Their house was a brown, dry affair of rustling wood and dark leaves. She loved sitting on the ledge…
Old Harry’s Daughters by Julianna Waters
Content Warning—child sexual abuse Tansy My sister, Liberty, tells me I need to exercise, that it cures all ills. Well, I don’t see how swimming cures hers. All it does is dry out her hair. Jolee, my youngest…
The Replacement by Paul Rousseau
4. It is prom night. A group of us are out to eat at The Urban Hive, on the rooftop. Couples sit in pairs around a table forged of meteorite. Smoky black, with a network of tiny bubble cells,…