Noah Evan Wilson

You’ve won. 

You’ve finally won at New York City. Not in the trust fund, big tech job, or Christopher Walken as King of New York kinda way. But for a bowl-cut Jesus camp kid from the sticks who grew up…

…..As we approach the gate of her apartment complex, Sara slows her pace and turns to me, slips her fingertips from three layers of sleeve and pulls down her scarf. Her nose is cherry-red, her lips dry and cracked…

He called it the observer effect... when you observe something, and it changes because you observed it…

~

       Jane weaved through the crowded subway station with her phone clenched in her fist, lighting up the screen to steal glances at…

For centuries, Jed had known memory as the still morning air, the dampness of spring soil, the sound of a splitting seed; as the material essence of all that surrounded him, all that made up his home on the high…

Day One: These were the last words Sara said: “Here goes nothing.”

Day Two: If she had an epiphany, it was how comfortable she already was with silence.

Day Three: Just as Alexis had said, Sara’s mind, like water, stilled,…

After Sam Allingham's “One Hundred Characters”

For one: your nephew, cry-screaming—it’s his fourth birthday. Then there’s your sister, a mom, so much like your mom, the way she announces, “We’re from out of town!” to the pimpled ticket-taker, the sunburned…

You’re back in the restaurant.

In uniform.

It’s closing time after another long shift. 

Bussing the last four-top, you watch your hands (a habit, now). Piling unclean plates and half-empty glasses, they appear smooth—no callouses, oil burns (or fingernails)—they aren’t…

Danilo found the camera on the beach. It looked expensive, left by one of the wealthy backpackers. He pressed each button, but the screen remained dark. Before he left school to work on his father’s fishing boat, he learned the…

By the time Adam is falling it no longer matters whether it was an accident, whether he was pushed, or pushed himself. All that matters now are the ten stories rushing toward him and the ground. 

How strange, Adam thinks,…

Hunched over the kitchen sink, my son held the point of an unhooked safety pin to a flame, watching it blacken clean. Then, one by one, he opened the blisters on his right index and middle fingertips. Then those on…