Tatau
Briana Loveall
When I was eighteen, and she was sixteen, I took my sister with me to get what would be my first tattoo—her name.I hadn’t known to research tattoo artists; ...
Nonfiction
The Boots
Kelly Griffiths
A 1977 divorce was trailblazing, and a custodial father was positively extraterrestrial. I was six.A serpentine driveway tethered our farmhouse to the count...
Let The Trees Remember
Lorraine Wilson
In the Russian Taiga, the forests west of Moscow, there are places where compasses do not work. Where there is so much lead in the trees, so many bullets hidden...
Before There Was a Road
Melanie McCabe
Maybe it began in the cool, green darkness beneath my mother’s rhododendron. Somehow I must have sensed, even at eight years old, that what I was doing was wron...
We Knocked Hard
Jacob M. Hall
I tried to count the blisters on my feet while you watched from the doorway. At age five, you were a year younger than me, just outside a dirty bathroom in a ho...
A Quiet Man
Wayne Scheer
You should have had a raucous Irish wake, the kind you see in movies. A bottle should have been passed from mourner to mourner, each telling stories about you, ...
The Gravity of Air
Claire Polders
We trudge through the cold as if burdened by stones. But not as if burdened. We are burdened for real, just not by stones. It’s the day’s gravity that weighs us...
Calling on Lady Day and John Coltrane
Bob Campbell
On the night of the 2016 presidential election, my wife and I went out for dinner and drinks rather than sit in front of the television watching the state-by-st...
Black Girls in Upscale Boutiques
Tigele Nlebesi
On my first day I’m too nervous to eat.During my interview two weeks prior I walk into an upscale boutique with an immaculat...
Irises
Anne Boyle
I bought flowers at the grocery store even though I didn’t mean to buy flowers at the grocery store.Fresh flowers are for afternoons when you feel shiny and...