Recommended stories

19.

10991099 views66 comments44 favs

They made posters and hung them everywhere. With the passing days she became the photograph at its center: hair always in the same ponytail; always with the same smile

Hoops

15721572 views99 comments33 favs

Backs in the grass, legs straight, bare feet resting at angles, Rachel and I, both of us seven, looked up through the oak limbs that made black lightning cracks across a blinding blue sky. Three hula hoops sat trapped in the trees’ sprawled grasp.

Owl, Glass, Deer

11711171 views77 comments44 favs

He calls it an owl glass: he’s allowed: he’s six.

The Havisham Complex

12291229 views66 comments44 favs

Zinvushka Zokolovskaya and I first met at the local botanical garden.

Strange Sign At the Outskirts to Paradise

743743 views55 comments44 favs

In an area of high winds and strong convictions, I have lived among the ever-changing crowd that is always the same. I must have died overnight, and now my wings are flapping in my own face. I used to be an owl, a night owl, to be sure

Honey Bee Men

977977 views66 comments44 favs

"...she's been seeming like she's been dreaming while awake lately..."

In the small hours

12181218 views55 comments44 favs

In the small hours

The mannequins are only playing dead

11041104 views33 comments55 favs

at nightthe mannequins leave their glass prisons and hunt owls in the forest***sometimes they dance a slo-mo tarantella in a clearingbone-white …

Your Call Is Not Very Important To Us

17281728 views55 comments33 favs

Please stay on the line. Or don't stay on the line. We don't care. If we cared about your call, we'd answer it. Which, to be honest, isn't going to happen. We're going to make you hold. And while you hold, we're going to subject you to some really bad…

Food & Treasure

859859 views44 comments44 favs

She wakes up with rosemary.

ANNIES CHASE

14691469 views1010 comments11 fav

Annie remembers clearly the smell of that classroom, the look and taste of it. Thirty little cruel girls, as cruel as only girls can be, sitting in rows of five.

Jagged Dog Story

11341134 views66 comments44 favs

But I had learned from ingesting Roberto’s glitter-eyed fear, it could make you never close enough, and then, never far enough away. And both at the same time.

We Loved We Laughed We Cried

11421142 views55 comments44 favs

My wife broke the news to me. She enjoyed it, too, I'm certain of that. It was a juicy piece of gossip.

Occupy This!

991991 views55 comments44 favs

The World is Full

364364 views55 comments33 favs

of birds. The world is full of snakes. The world isfull of mushrooms. The world is full of flies. The worldis full of bombs. Not so many trees. Not as many as you might think. The world is full of flowers. Notso many bees. The world is full of rocks. Some…

Schadenfreude

691691 views44 comments44 favs

It's 50/50 that you'll ever pad your knee enough to ever kneel on it. Your back hurts, the Orthapedist labels it arthritis. I think that means we're getting old, so I crawl up the tower of your body as I'm a little younger, more sprightly. You're a

It's autumn

967967 views66 comments44 favs

Mum and Dad are dead, though I'm the only person who has noticed. They're sipping their tea in the kitchen. Dad keeps coughing up maggots. Mum's face looks like a cracked mirror: I see myself in it, broken, dark. My brothers carry on as normal. They huddle by the TV,…

Double Helix

988988 views55 comments55 favs

Violence and property

Pals

11781178 views44 comments33 favs

There was a body in the backseat, and they drove through the highways at night to a late night radio show that played 80’s power ballads. He said: “I am really glad you’re here for me.”

High Fives

855855 views44 comments44 favs

They pull up to the curbside and he jumps out to shake the hands in that familiar men’s grasp/shake they do when saluting each other. If that isn’t his daughter it should be, the one sitting in his car, with her door wide open.

The Dark

11541154 views66 comments44 favs

Outlined against the thinly layered darkness of the room, there is a silhouette of a small boy with his feet pulled up to the chin, failing to hold its own against the thousand stares from the deep violating the stillness of his room, their long familiarity with the…

A Hole In The Bucket

11611161 views77 comments11 fav

In 1978, a computer program became privy to my grandmother's most secret thoughts.

Angie, I Think

999999 views66 comments33 favs

“I guess I'm enchanted,” I'd written on another occasion. “Then why don't you ride out here and save me? Is your horse lame or something? Maybe you could just kill me and make us both happy.”

Cognitive Patterns Somewhere on the Borders of Dark Matter and Dark Energy

514514 views55 comments44 favs

At least the cephalopods on their planet manage to comport themselves with some dignity, as well as demonstrating some actual intellectual acumen.

Children's Time

12321232 views99 comments33 favs

During what's called "Children's time," one day at church Sarah slides her left foot halfway out of her tiny ballet slipper to show Davie her toenails are painted the same soft pink as the inside of her shoe. "Look," she says. "My…

Urban Renewal

15981598 views77 comments33 favs

Bike shops, vintage shops, after hour bar shops

The next hour

10741074 views66 comments44 favs

I allow myself one hour every two weeks. Devoting 335 of my 336 hours to her and the kids is beyond dutiful.

Mona

13051305 views66 comments33 favs

Doc and I talked for several hours. When I told him Mona was pregnant, he turned his head and looked at me. “Who's the father?” he asked. Don't know, I said. Mona didn't know, either.

Alice White Loves Me Because

10801080 views88 comments44 favs

She loves you when your words leave her dirty, semi-transparent, at times, overexposed.

The Lament of Last Century's Escape Artists

808808 views55 comments55 favs

Here's to the new, trying ever so hard but not too hardto have an audience with their own personal God ontheir own super duper terms, wonder kids. Aren't theybeautiful, one of a kind cells, Ladies and Gentlemen? Thepaint job alone is worth the…