I’m flickering. My light is growing dimmer each day. I don’t like it. It’s supposed to be either off or on. Off during daytime and on at nighttime. It’s always been that way, always. Hazy. I feel hazy. Trying to remember makes me feel worse, but I don’t want to forget.     Some of the sidewalk … Continue reading →

Adrian and Adrienne grew up in the same town, same school. They saw each other in passing and didn’t spare a second thought, not as children, not as adolescents, not until one day at the spring fair when they were almost grown. He was 18 and she was seven months younger. That day some primal … Continue reading →

Characters: RAY: Stay at home father VERONICA: Working mother with postpartum depression PATRICIA: Overworked, caring mother JACKSON: Bachelor party man   (An immaculate dining room with a long table and six matching chairs perfectly placed around it. The room is well decorated and all of the paintings, potted plants and knick-knacks on the shelves are … Continue reading →

Morgan arrived in my bathtub early in January. I worried about him, at first. Was he starving? Dehydrated? Bored to tears, just clinging to the side of the tub like that, always in the same spot, day after day? Then I said to myself, “You’re just a silly old woman. There’s nothing you can do … Continue reading →

 “I’m gonna slam this laptop against the wall. I swear I fucking will.”     Kazuya Takahashi writes because…well, there really isn’t a “because”. He just does it because somehow he actually likes it, and despite his threat of slamming his expensive laptop against a perfectly innocent wall, he knows that he’s going to continue to write. … Continue reading →

He was grounded for the entire summer, having finished the fourth grade with a U—for unsatisfactory—in penmanship. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been warned, was it? his mother asked on the last day of school. She sat at the table in their small kitchen, the stiff green paper of his report card somehow even more … Continue reading →

Ben walks into the room and stubs his toe on the leg of a table that used to be two feet to the left, next to the sofa. She’d rearranged. “Would you like some coffee?” she asks, already headed to the kitchen to brew it before Ben has a chance to respond. He can’t say … Continue reading →

Cast of Characters PERSON A: Male/Female, hungry, chip-loving individual who does not have the u best sense of silence. PERSON B: Male/Female, busy, easily annoyed individual searching for silence.   Place A quiet room (a library, a waiting room, etc.) Time Present Opening in Silence (PERSON B is sitting at a desk/table working very studiously. … Continue reading →

Eugene coaxed his new ’57 Buick over the treacherous streets, thankful for the chains he’d put on his tires just last week. Some years you didn’t need them, but this winter was turning out to be a doozy, one of the worst on record. The sun had actually come out today, but its only effect … Continue reading →

Since someone had already prepared the loaves of dough, this story begins in medias res, with the noodle-maker pounding a loaf on a floury table. It also begins in the middle of a conversation. A: … I can’t stand them, they’re everywhere. You get on a subway, at least half the passengers… you go to … Continue reading →