In the summer between seventh and eighth grade, my dad’s brother, Uncle Roy, came to look after my sister Missy and me while our parents watched our Grandma Lori die.
Music was serious to me — and so was anger.
With their hands clasped and knuckles squeezed white, the newlyweds descended the church steps. Flashing cameras froze the tossed rice in midair. Later that day at the crime scene, when the detective …
We’re Facetiming from our apartments. I’m up in Inwood, happy that my housemates aren’t home but anxious they might return and overhear our conversation. Angie is in Carroll Gardens where she …
When I ask him what his favorite kinds of pretzels are, he says rods. I tell him those are better than sourdough, but nothing beats traditional. He asks me how I define “traditional” and before I …
The summer my grandmother’s fugues started, my mom was working two jobs, one as a nurse at St. Joseph’s Hospital and another as a freelance secretary in a small translation house that sent her …
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 …