A finger on the lips, a rubbing of the brow, a curling of the lip even at the threshold. This is the snip-snip rhythm Esme finds at Nana’s now that Grampa is gone.
Esme learns her lesson by Cole Beauchamp and Sumitra Singam
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Issue #34
To Brown Duck, Potters’ Mill Pond, Brynby Green, Lincolnshire LN12 0BX by Philippa Bowe and Karen Walker
Dear Duck, here there are only gulls for company, some are large and quite pretty but they’re all strangers. Please reply. How are you?
IVF by Ela Brave and Iván Brave
“This is your sperm cell,” the nurse practitioner says. He draws an oval with a squiggly line on the white crunchy paper of the medical exam table. Meanwhile I’m annoyed and feeling like a dumb lab rat.
Lucy Goes to the Museum of American Nuptials by Kate Faigen and Kyle Weik
In the Engagement Room, Lucy holds up her ring finger to a display of diamonds. Something inside her sparkles. She fantasizes about a gold band sliding past her bare knuckle: slowly, quickly. Lucy blushes hard, then shuffles after a group into the First Dance Studio.
Jealousy Always Brought Out the Best In Her by Christine Fugate and Rina Palumbo
Green eyes widen, brown roots starting to emerge beneath blonde hair, she has a killer smile, feral, sultry and dangerous. Not her now. The person she only remembered from that night, the night of a long car ride the three of them took into the swamps of Tennessee,...
The Valley of the Shadow of Death by Rachel Harbaugh and Sarah Hurd
Silas sat on the rotting porch steps and waited. It seemed he’d been waiting all his life—for the sun to come up, for his Pa to pick him up from school, for the lone plum tree out back to bear fruit, red and sticky-sweet inside.
Grief Sandwiches by Lucas Flatt and Travis Flatt
I’m in the elevator with the angel.
“I’m hungry,” I say.
“You can eat peanut butter again.”
My mother hated the smell of peanut butter. As kids, my brother and I got it all over everything. Mom said it smelled to her like dogshit.
Courtesy by Kim Magowan and Michelle Ross
At the checkout line, I wave ahead a woman who clutches nothing but a bottle of shampoo. She doesn’t say thank you, but she does smile gratefully, so I’m not too bothered by the omission. But then she and the elderly cashier get to chatting. About courtesy, of all things.