I came out of my bedroom to find my housemate Charlotte gazing at herself in a full-length mirror. She looked quite pretty dressed up in a long blue dress for her sister Sara’s wedding. Her brown hair was trimmed and styled better than I had ever seen it before. A little silver pendant holding a ruby hung from a chain around her neck. Charlotte had even put on makeup beyond just lipstick, a rarity for her. “What do you th...

Mitzy was poking her peas around the plate one night at dinner. Her parents exchanged a look, silently asking the other which one of them would ask their daughter what was going on first, like an invisible game of rock paper scissors, before one of her fathers cleared his throat. “You got a grievance with the peas? You are moving them around your plate with an air of disinterest and I thought they were your most favorite...

July’s midsummer heat stuck. It stuck to the blades of grass. It stuck to Sumire’s beige romper. It stuck to everything and anything like a sweltering bog. Sweat drenched her underarms as she set up her easel and foldable chair. Even at her elevated vantage point, the muggy draft painted her body with its salty sheen.Wiping her brow, she gazed over the stacked rows of terraced rice paddies below, bristling with the vibran...

With an open mouth, I breathed you inside,  Fearlessly, you nested in my ribcage, Hanging bobbles, you settled in for the ride My heartbeat bare, center stage    You slept soundlessly on my lungs, Spend your days observing the muscles of my heart The way it pulsed, it spoke in tongues How did you enjoy this new start?   Days passed as you poked and prodded, Through every inch of flesh, Through all the blood that clotted U...

"Are you there, my dear Eloise?" she called out to the shadows. She waited in still silence, hanging on hope. Her pulse grew as the wind picked up, rattling the windows. She spun around, searching for a figure in the darkness. Wood creaked underneath her as she stepped closer. "I still think of you, my dear Eloise. The way your hair tangles in the wind, the way you squint when you're upset, the softness of your lips..." s...

Henry Walker Wainscot stood leaning against the stone wall in the foyer of his new dorm while waiting for his mom. They were going to have lunch in the cafeteria, then explore the city. Henry had never really been to Boston, having grown up in Western Massachusetts. In cow country, he liked to think, although the three cows were more of an agricultural front for a toxic waste dump. It was exciting for him to be in the cit...

It was the summer before her junior year in high school. Diana was unsure of what would happen. She was new here in this small town. Her parents had moved the family to this coastal area as soon as she and her brother had completed school. Now they were getting adjusted to living in a town that had the amount of people found on one block of her old home city. She still thought of her last home as her real home. Diana was...

She was the product of four different diasporas - Armenian, French, Greek and Scottish - and this showed in her features; her face was long and thin, with freckles spread across it like stars on a cloudless night, her nose was large and beak-like and her eyes, wide, understanding, and a deep chocolatey brown that clashed so shockingly and wonderfully against her thick tresses of curly red hair. She was everything I had ev...