THE LUCKY ONE by Pamela Painter
She walks with purpose over to a gangly tree and dumps our mother’s ashes at its base, then smears them around with the toe of her purple sneaker. Then she turns to face me as if to see if I’m going to object.
MY FRIEND LOUISE… by Susannah Felts
Amber beads, electric blue billowing, jasmine. Here comes Louise, here she comes, into the kitchen.
ELAINE by LJ Pemberton
The more of Elaine he had had, the less it felt like she belonged to him at all. Besides, he said, I have learned that even possession is a kind of disappointment.
DOCTOR’S VISIT by Paula Gil-Ordoñez Gomez
While we wait for the fruits of deliberation, my mother asks me to get personal. I tell her I’ve been nightmaring about getting kidnapped and beating the captor up.
POWER OUTAGE by Zsófia Czakó; translated by Marietta Morry and Walter Burgess
She looked at that tree as if it were a murderer, and with hate in her eyes told me that in her dreams every night she sneaks over with an axe and chops it down with two strokes.
SPILL by Christina D’Antoni
At night I dreamt of pelicans strung up in the oaks by their beaks, choked in Spanish moss, the storm’s winds blowing them down. Cars sliding through gasoline, smearing their bodies into the street.
WHATEVER by Emma Estridge
She emails me a PDF of instructions. The first is Learn to sit quietly with yourself. I feel that we have already skipped a step.
HEATERS by Brett Biebel
There was a fence, and there were holes in it, and she looked like a lizard sometimes, a shitload of speed coiled inside some slender frame.
THREE by Amanda Gersh
I used to say I couldn’t travel because I didn’t have the time, but now I’ve got all the time in the world because the world isn’t using it.
PORCELAIN by Nicholas Claro
The couch is more of a loveseat. It hardly seats the two of us. On it is the pillow and blanket I’ve been using. This is the longest conversation we’ve had in over a week.