by Kyle Mayer I guess it started when my dad mowed up a baby rabbit. I was swinging under the apple tree from the wooden tower that doesn’t exist anymore, the one that would lift up in one corner if I swung too high, where the ants made a nest every year no matter how many times my father poured poison down the holes that left our lawn looking like worn pumice. The post had rotted through and a more modernistic viewpoint would have marked the entire tower as ‘not safe for children’ but in those days things weren’t unsafe until someone got hurt, and so I was swinging as…

by Johanna Kumpula This woman was different. Her eyes were alit with thousands of fires, yet somedays the smoke was all too apparent. The late night whispered words held more meaning to me than any heartfelt poem but her calloused hands wrote symphonies I couldn’t hear. She wove her way through my mind like a serpent, feeding on every doubt until, one by one, they all disappeared. I saw her – the beauty in her soul and the flaws on her sleeves. I was a ghost compared to her, wallowing in the shadow of her brilliance. When I finally decided to acknowledge her constant presence, I was unaware of the…

by Allison O’Leary After it ended, Laura would sit on the bed in her room, eyes closed, fingers gripping, mind quiet, quiet, quiet. Being a practical person, Laura understood the negative consequences of psychological repression and allowed herself at most three minutes a day to sit and think as every muscle in her body yearned to scream. Calmly, she would go about her day: washing the laundry with a cupful of lavender soap, filling out job applications, wondering whether she should take the old cat into the vet. Decisively, she would will herself not to think about it, not to let her mind wander to places that would prevent her…

by Aurelia Gonzalez The first time I heard “Tell Your Heart Heads Up” by Mutemath, I was in an abandoned cabin, half a mile from the AK-1 highway, just north of Wasilla. I was looking for food. I was with Em, the only other living person I’d met between Peters Creek and Wasilla. We had thought we were still in a dead zone, where even lightbulbs didn’t work, and when we heard the noise we jumped. Em went straight for her gun. I ducked under the table in the kitchen. We realized after a minute that there wasn’t really anybody else in the house, and we both felt pretty stupid.…

by Sarah Cooley One fine day, a young girl went skipping through the woods. This girl had an adoration for all wildlife, but her mother had always been careful to warn her about bears. Bears, her mother said, were terrible, carnivorous beasts that would eat anyone that bothered them. The little girl promised her mother that she would be wary of the dreadful bears, but being a very optimistic child, decided that acting friendly couldn’t hurt. She hopped along the woodland path, and came across a cave. She stopped near the entrance and called, “Is there anybody home?” A low voice rumbled, as a brown furry face appeared in the…

by Kirby Hobley Get straggled along after the other little cats jumbling down the path. “Don’t stray!” the line leader reminded. “It’s dangerous,” she threatened. But the evening wind was whipping at his fur in fits and starts. It bothered his whiskers and tousled his thoughts. He itched to let it blow him up into the treetops. Get was afraid of nothing and the forest believed him. It wiggled, promising mischief, so, without a moment of consideration, he disappeared into its tangles. The forest was pleased to have a willing subject and slathered its affection on him. It worked its sappy fingertips into his fur and tickled his heart with…

by L. J. P. T. Krallek “Where were you today?” he asked, looking up from his book as she came into their bedroom, her jacket halfway down her arms. She shrugged her shoulders and went to sit at her antique vanity, placing her back to him. In the first years of their marriage, she’d turn and look at him while readying herself for the night; the last several had held only cold, squared shoulders and rigidly straight backs and stilted answers to half-hearted questions. “I wasn’t sure you were coming home.” “I nearly didn’t,” she replied, pulling an earring loose from her right lobe. “There’s not much reason for me…

by L. J. P. T. Krallek They had called it a house of hope when they first came. There were young still, and after the dark storms of war, life seemed to hold new promise once more – despite the scars sustained by both from the days of fear and fighting. His scars were easier to name – the bullet wound in his leg, the loss of his tear-ducts in Africa, the horrors that woke him screaming in the dark stillness of the night until he cursed dreaming and hated sleep and turned to whiskey to deaden his memory and render nights calm and without terror. It was harder for…