Either way, whatever the city’s doing, it’s enough to change the color of the sky to this bone-white dome, the color of talc, and if they can take the blue out of the sky, they can take something …
The violinist made a little speech. “All music,” he said, “concerns life and living.”
Ever since Ramona debuted her prosthetic leg at school, she’s walked the school halls with her head a little higher.
We had been sent out of the house to collect turnips. I was thirteen and Yukari was ageless, I thought then, as anyone above twenty-five seemed ageless to me...
After Graham stopped returning my texts, I started leaving little parts of myself all over the Internet. In his early twenties, especially, Graham left doorways to himself everywhere—not just the …
When she is young, the name “Mary” is very common. If Social Security records for the ranked popularity of baby names in any given year went back to the first century, “Mary” would be number …
Online Exclusive fiction from Jessica Lee Richardson.
Shelly is fifteen years old, and she is alive today. Shelly is only sometimes alive. Sometimes she is dead.
Although both my parents do absolutely vicious impressions of people, Papà is the hotel-caged method diva, momentarily inhabiting your emotional truth to play whatever stupid thing you just said …
As she dreams, she knits birds onto blankets, sheltering them from the misery of the outside world in the new homes she fashions from her palms. Other times, she knits cushion covers, continuing till …
Address: Papa has a lot of rules and his new rule is that we’d better not tell people where we live anymore. He used to not care, and I was allowed to invite my friends over and give them the …
“I rented a video from Facets. It sounds interesting.” When Selena shared this with her partner, Ry replied, “Another porno?” Selena had been bringing home lots of “interesting” videos …
Officially—according to the Nassau County Medical Examiner—officially, we were both dead. When we boarded the plane in LaGuardia, we had been in caskets. What an incredible idea, our …
Sixty years now the town of Centralia has been burning. Some folks say it’ll take two hundred years more to burn itself through. The maze of coal mines underneath us caught fire and there’s …
When it thaws the worms will move again, I said, among new rocks. They will work the soil into lace until the rains lift them to the grass, where the birds will part their beaks and bow down to them. …
At the time of my commission, I did not know all the things this man would do, which means I did not know federal troops would be ordered into the cities, that water cannons would be fired, that …
I make you marzipan from scratch, hang a new birdfeeder outside your window, repot the kalanchoe, reseason cast iron. Eventually, the house is like a flowerbed you laid out with everything in its …
The sun sets. In the line to board the bus, Wayde decides that he only wants one thing out of this journey: an apology. That is the only way he will accept his father. Wayde cares about the hunger, …
One afternoon of his every-other-Saturdays, my dad took the crossbow gingerly, respectfully from its box on the top shelf of his bedroom closet and led us out onto the apartment’s second-story back …
Jacob opened up an entirely new door for us. After that, we often spoke to the camera directly, to our therapist, when it felt like speaking to each other was getting us nowhere. I loved how …