It all came to a head when I mentioned to my boyfriend Tim that I might want to get a cat. I’d always had cats as a kid, I told him, and our new apartment seemed to need one. Of course, I didn’t mention the hole in our lives in our new apartment, which I […]
Issue 79
Susann Cokal: Last Meeting of the China Moon Pain Club
Irene gave herself credit for trying. She had made an honest effort. But no amount of urging could convince Anne to celebrate her birthday in a real restaurant, one with table service rather than a buffet: It was the Santa Fe China Moon or nothing. “It’s our tradition,” Anne insisted. “Yours and mine and my […]
Olivia Birdsall: Things Left Behind
I pull the emergency break back until it grinds reassuringly, a sort of audible punctuation. Over the steering wheel, out the window of the car, I see a hand-painted wooden sign planted in the patchy grass outside of the building: “Donner Pioneer Museum.” My little brother Danny and I have driven an hour and a […]
Miah Arnold: Snap
The tailor is leaning over me, peering at the dimensions of my head, going so far as to feel my skull with his plastic-man hands. He makes guttural cawing sounds as he begins lifting my varied limbs, pulling at them, checking their mobility and lengths. Then he rechecks my air-tight body diaper for leaks; pores […]
Lindsay Anderberg: Coco
When I woke up I knew I was pregnant with Coco. It was raining and my window was open. While I was sleeping, droplets of water had pushed through the screen holes and ricocheted off of the windowsill’s chipping, white paint in unlikely trajectories. The drops landed in an uneven spray across the blanket covering […]
Hillery Stone: Fever
She lies on our bed whimpering under a blanket she’s kicked off ten times this morning- how am I to know whether to warm her or take away the warmth as her fever rages, marches past the Tylenol we gave, the chilled towels, the bag of frozen peas I pressed and pressed to her swollen […]