It wasn’t painful, there were no teeth, no pain, just pure darkness.   As I began descending, the sensation felt like an unexpected and...

My dad taught me how to ride a bike.  I was old enough to have opinions about how this all should happen—firstly, that I be well-prepared...

I had been meaning to take a few dresses and rompers to the dry cleaners. I had rented three dresses to try on for my friends’ wedding...

At sixteen, on a sunny summer day, you lay in bed, daydreaming about your future. The image of a shiny linoleum floor with a woman...

My dentist asks: Are you brushing twice a day?   I wonder why I’m able to drive 47 minutes out of my way for a boy who doesn’t care about...

While my mother was still alive, we’d moved to a brand-new home in one of those strangely uniformed suburbs in South Miami. Because blue...

On a Wednesday night at the hotel in Kyoto, an old woman approaches me in the public onsen and sings to me with sweetness in her voice.  ...

The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.   --William Faulkner       “Science” says that your cerebral cortex, the frontal lobes of...

It’s New Year’s Eve, and I’m lying on the couch with my head on my boyfriend’s heart and my left hand fingering his lower lip. It’s firm...

Four days ago, I bought melons—one, a cantaloupe. A normal melon. Thick skin hard, dappled beige and grey. Once I spied a woman in...

The time will pass anyways. You might as well enjoy it. You have to keep going. This is your choice, but wake up and choose it every...

This is the winning selection from the 2024 Spring Fiction & Nonfiction Contest. For more information about our upcoming contests, please...