I asked you if it was true and measured your silence, the weight of it. When you looked away, I wondered if I would ever feel light again.
Mário de Seabra Coelho (@MSeabraCoelho) has been published in a few places but doesn’t know why.
Family gone, he lives in a van by the pier. With gnarled fingers he baits kids’ hooks and untangles their lines, fishing for memories.
Kim Favors writes from California’s coast.
“Was I ever really human?” I asked.
Dimitri frowned. “With all you’ve achieved…does it really matter?”
I whispered: “It matters to him.”
Kelsey Yandura (@kelseyyan) really enjoys picnics but thinks potato salad is weird. Also, really into fantasy, sci-fi, empathy, and whiskey.
His breath puffs out in white clouds. The path ahead stretches into the darkness. Mayhap it wouldn’t hurt to lay down for a while.
W. B. Biggs is a writer, a teacher, and an aspiring wizard.
When I awoke I knew my sister Meredith had left. Because it was the cold that woke me up, you see. My mother had turned the heat back off.
Scott Harris (@ScottHarrisMMA) is a freelance writer based near Washington, DC.
The two carried the bags of clean clothes back to the van. Who will we be? asked the boy. I don’t know, said the man. Who do you want to be?
Robert Hoekman Jr (@rhjr) thinks death is when you stop chasing. He writes and writes. He lives on a farm and refuses to be put into a box.
Out of habit, the man called his wife while going home. Then he realized she left him long ago. He was ok he thought. It was just his habit.
Pratik Mitra teaches besides writing.
She put PLEASE DO NOT PICK on the plum tree that was within picking distance of the street, as if that would stop pickers from picking.
Cheyenne Wiseman is an undergraduate at UC Davis majoring in English.
She shut off the news feeling helpless. Wandered her house in despair. Found a half roll of Charmin, and defiantly used twice the squares.
Steph Thompson (@stephthmpsn) is cautiously navigating the new year with defiant optimism and an adequate supply of paper products.
I anticipate the day I can tell my students I quit that website before they were born. It is not far off, those kids halfway to me already.
Ben Roth teaches writing and philosophy at Harvard.