“Mamas always come back,” my daughter’s new preschool teacher whispered to a sobbing little girl on their first day. Inside the classroom, my daughter stared at her sobbing classmate and squeezed my hand tight. My daughter was anxious, too. As I’d sat with her at bedtime the night before, she’d asked dozens of questions about…
Category: Issue 12
Issue 12.4 – Fiction
Darkness unspooling on the other side of the glass disappeared under the fog of her breath. Head resting against the window, she scribbled 4 5 27 in the mist, before erasing the numbers with a long sigh. She was tired, but not sleepy, even though it was past midnight and they had left the last…
Issue 12.4
Young, but you were never really innocent The imprint I left on the past I want to say a few words To guide you until you catch up with me I have come to accept what is inside of me I don’t ask why anymore But you, I know you ask You will plead your…
Issue 12.3 – Nonfiction
“My period started again,” I said, passing by my husband, Dyami, in our living room. By “again”, I meant two days after it finished. He sat watching TV, but looked up at me with concern. “You okay?” he asked, muting the sound. “I’m fine,” I said. I tried to pretend I believed that. Saying “fine”…
Issue 12.3 – Fiction
There’s a voice message on my phone at work – Harry’s throaty growl. ‘I need to see you Jess,’ he barks. ‘I need your help. You better come’. I imagine his face close to mine, adding ‘or else you’ll be sorry,’ in his Glaswegian twang, his face pink, his teeth bared. Just like in the…
Issue 12.3 – Poetry
Señora I did what I set out to do. I put all my hope into getting here Right here and I hate it I’ve never felt sadness like this Like these dotted lines down my forearms Restraer mi sangre hasta donde comienze Like the dust on these books I wipe you away The sweet…
Issue 12.2 -Fiction
They called him Ole, but Betty knew it was an alias. None of the agents who fell from the sky in parachutes used their real name. It didn’t matter. He was the boy from the stall, and he was here, seated on her kitchen bench opposite her brother, accepting the heavy crystal bowl she handed…
Issue 12.2 – Poetry
There is this feeling – perhaps it is regret – when I find old transit cards and other relics of my former urban self here and there, tucked away like the old metal folding cart I used to lug groceries to my apartment now languishing in the garage; each square of its grid, a…
Issue 12.1 – Nonfiction
I was the last person to see him alive. It was a typical Friday night. All of my friends were at the football game, and I was working my usual shift at Burger King. Somehow I was the one poor kid in my peer group that had to work, it wasn’t just for character building….
Issue 12.1 – Fiction
I remember peering around the doorway watching each plate shatter, splintering into a ceramic snowstorm at the hands of my mother. For some reason my memory has omitted the sound. I see her mouth open wide, her eyes and nose dripping. I see the droplets merging with the flying debris as she furiously throws her…
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