Which is why you whisper the story your mother used to sing before sleep, glow-in-the-dark stars like phosphorescence across the ceiling as you half-dreamed the story about an almost forgotten ancestor, shipwrecked at sea.

Sealsong in Cryosleep

Where the light, think of it, covers everything

Melanin No. 1

Melanin No. 6

Structural design: Made of two-by-fours and broken promises, it was built on shifting ground. The burning: After staying silent for so long, you finally find your voice, and your words are enough to set the fire.

A Guide to Burning Bridges

When we reach out to her, she clasps one of our hands in both of her own. We feel the impression of her fingers on ours long after she has turned away.

The Iridescents

Body as a home for the sun

Chaotic Luminescence

He was gentle and quiet until my hands filled up, then he made me his pushpin...

[He keeps handing me cacti]

Will you still love me when I am a worm? I still love you. Your voice rumbling in the darkness / Your song in the morning.

Annelida

Idioms were a topic of conversation but not the reason people spent money on the app. The people on the app were lonely. Twenty dollars an hour was not bad for a cure.

The Chinese Man and the Desert

I want time. I need soap. The ring is not dirty. It’s stuck. Fingers swell with ennui after marriage.

Wedding ring is to take off as crash is to land

An ancient bird broke away from the brigade and snuck in / to watch a film on trees.

Woodland Wisdom Tooth

Here, the pain says and points to my leg like a child unsure of where the Arctic might be on a map.

I Asked Pain Its Address,

On a June night when the south-westerly monsoon winds bring drizzles to Mahrashtra, my father asks if we must call my grandfather. I immediately agree.

For Sentimentality

Time and Tides

The blob made its way into downtown Arlington, Virginia fixing power lines and removing graffiti all the while. Such decrepitude in infrastructure was not conducive to a good business environment.

The Blob (1947-Pres)

We glide to the boats on silent waves. Our paddles slicing through the waters. Our war canoes hidden in the darkness of a new moon.

Once Upon a Time in Hawaii

Her toes curling in the sand, Tita counts the shells spiraling beside her. Their bleached bodies, remnants of once-living creatures, wondering if her bones will shine as brightly when she is dead.

Skin and Bone

The first time I’d held a basketball, I was four, and my Dad had passed it gently to me. In my hands, it was heavy and I dropped it. As it rolled away, I saw people climb up from the lines.

Alley-Oop

The man in an MF DOOM shirt, “El Chacal,” was masked: a virus had spread that winter. It will all be over soon, he thought.

EL CHACAL

I fell into a pile of old wrinkled love poems I had written in youth to a young lady I had a crush on back in undergrad.

The Fireman

i learned how to win in four moves at chess. i learned the three segments of every insect’s body. i learned that ms. jacqueline takes her smoke breaks behind the gymnasium and stubs out her cigarette on the oleander petals.

[i learned how to win in four moves]

most of us saw what we were looking for, rather than what we found. i take my grape-nuts with instant coffee. now the river is an empty bed of sand.

[most of us saw what we were looking for]

Backstroking across a green screen, the weatherman warns of falling skies and downed power lines. Spleen-shaped hailstones shatter windshields and aviaries.

The Weatherman Again Predicts a Once-in-a-Lifetime Storm

Alone Together

Inverness Rocks

A town was a kind of black hole. A street was. A house, a river. People you never saw again were like that, taking a part of you with them, the part of you that you were when you spent time alone with them, and no one else ever knew that part of you existed.

Samuel Rafael Barber

The Blob (1947-Pres)

Melissa Llanes Brownlee

Once Upon a Time in Hawaii

Skin and Bone

Erin Calabria

Sealsong in Cryosleep

Chloe N. Clark

Alley-Oop

James Diaz

Where the light, think of it, covers everything

Jose Hernandez Diaz

EL CHACAL

The Fireman

Emrys Donaldson

The Iridescents

Joshua Effiong

Body as a home for the sun

Chaotic Luminescence

Thomas Hobohm

[He keeps handing me cacti]

Ash Howell

Annelida

Arihant Jain

Melanin No. 1

Melanin No. 6

Sneha Subramanian Kanta

For Sentimentality

Christine Kwon

The Chinese Man and the Desert

Shannan Mann

Wedding ring is to take off as crash is to land

Sean McCoy

[i learned how to win in four moves]

[most of us saw what we were looking for]

Benjamin Niespodziany

Woodland Wisdom Tooth

Teresa Pham-Carsillo

The Weatherman Again Predicts a Once-in-a-Lifetime Storm

Erin Price

Alone Together

Inverness Rocks

Ashish Kumar Singh

I Asked Pain Its Address,

Alex Toy

I Love Everyone

Ojo Victoria

Time and Tides

Claudia Wair

A Guide to Burning Bridges