…..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…
May 31, 2025
The Inbetween (Electric Spec, Vol. 20 Issue #2)
He called it the observer effect... when you observe something, and it changes because you observed it…
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Jane weaved through the crowded subway station with her phone clenched in her fist, lighting up the screen to steal glances at…
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Jun 4, 2024
The Old Kind of Memory (Orca, Issue #16)
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…
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Jan 11, 2024
The Mind Like Water (Chautauqua: Rooted and Growing, Issue #21.1)
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,…
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Jun 23, 2023
One Hundred Characters at an Amusement Park (Third Street Review, Issue #2)
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…
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Dec 21, 2022
The Last Shift (Dreamers Creative Writing Magazine, Issue #13)
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…
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Aug 12, 2022
One Thousand Words for Dark (Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Issue #29)
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…
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Mar 16, 2022
Ten Stories Down, from Ten Ways the Animals Will Save Us (Retreat West Books, 2022)
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,…
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Mar 16, 2022
The Fading (Prime Number Magazine, Issue #199)
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…
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