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My mother and I were alone the night / our house burned down. I was nine that summer, / and the smell of smoke clung to my clothes. / And after the fire a tree in the yard / grew crooked with scoliosis, its back bending / away from the remains of the house.
By Doug RamspeckNovember 2023An Indian immigrant, an oil-company man, a bicycle-riding nomad
By Our ReadersNovember 2023When I was a senior in high school, I became obsessed with the home movies Dad kept in his armoire, behind bottles of cologne. Every day I’d reach through a cloud of Brut and vanilla musk, remove a tape from the stack, and watch the footage alone in our basement, captivated by images of the kid I used to be.
By John Paul ScottoOctober 2023It started with the mouse in the grass by the sidewalk, ants / crawling on its face. Aidan wanted to touch it. I drew him back / and held him. We talked about the gray fur and the tiny ants. He asked / if the mouse was going to go home to his mama and daddy. / No, I told him, the mouse won’t get to go home again.
By Donovan McAbeeOctober 2023Sneaking cartoons, escaping into a sitcom, watching the election results
By Our ReadersOctober 2023We are thirteen, my cousin Sally and me — girls on our own, on the roam, under the big skies of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. We’re here for the summer, living in a trailer that my aunt Helen has rented as part of a lengthy effort to seduce her law-school professor Phil, who lives next door.
By Leah RutherfordSeptember 2023My classmates were all getting their driver’s licenses. Like any of us had anywhere important to go. They drove cars their parents had gifted them, either a hand-me-down or a brand-new lease. I was the last without a provisional license and the only one without a car parked outside Shane Yamamoto’s house.
By Joseph HanSeptember 2023A coded diary, a box of letters, a closed bedroom door
By Our ReadersSeptember 2023Being exposed to psychics at such a young age was like being raised Catholic or vegetarian: you continue living out these belief systems even after they no longer serve you.
By Mishele MaronAugust 2023Long-distance running is the dogged refusal to bend to the way you feel. It is the accommodation of pain. If you run long enough, far enough, fast enough, you will carve out a place in yourself where pain can live.
By Margo SteinesAugust 2023Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
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