Misery Swamp
Phone said 2:45pm. This means school is out, scream and shout. In case future daughter/granddaughter is reading this, a few things to note: all students wear tiny gray uniform skirt, boxers poke underneath.
Student Work: Fiction
The Return
“How am I supposed to connect to you, or anyone, if I don’t even know who I am!” I shouted as she slammed the door behind me. I left my girlfriend’s apartment in Spanish Harlem that rainy September night feeling strangely liberated.
The Curious Account of How I Became a Ghost
Sitting on an airplane, suspended somewhere over the gulf of Mexico, I stared numbly at the shapes and shadows flitting over the eight-inch screen in front of me —one I had thoroughly disinfected with a Wet One®. I wondered, was …
Perfect Earlobes
She puts on long, droopy earrings and stares back at me in the mirror. Try these, she says, and hands me a pair of danglies. You have perfect ears, she says. Look, she says. Perfect. Look at your earlobe.
Aposymbiosis
I had only ever thought about it as my shadow. I was in middle school when I first noticed it.
Parables of Law and War
The outpost had existed for centuries, stocked with soldiers for reasons lost to time.
Zlata’s Orb
There was once a young woman named Zlata hailing from a far away land. A land that was neither real nor unreal. This land of origin was a blissful safe haven, and was all that she knew—she knew nothing of …
Lonely Plus One
I hate drinking games. Why do you need words to consume alcohol? Why do you need alcohol to consume words?
House
I already miss home. As expected, moving was a mistake. This house is big and empty. I don’t like big houses; my mother knows that. They make me feel small.
Hearing Sadness
My therapist, a woman in her mid-forties with short hair and small spectacles, clears her throat and finds eye contact with uncomfortable politeness. I admit that I enjoy watching how therapists bend over backward to maintain composure, “Jess, I think you might be Bipolar.”
ENJOY THE SILENCE
April, with its watery eyes and cherubic yawns, ushered in an unconvincing spring that year.
AVOCADO PIEROGIES
First it was the chain stores. Dunkin’ Donuts bought out Sal’s. But that was happening to mom-and-pop stores across the country. Not ideal, but what do you expect nowadays? Then it was the people who swooped in and claimed to save the diner on the corner from closing. Now the only pierogies I can get are filled with avocado and salmon and some kind of berry I can’t pronounce.
IT’S JUST A BIT
She hits my foot from under the table. First it’s a mistake, then she beams up at me and does it again, on purpose this time. We both laugh. “What’s funny?” they ask. “Nothing,” we say. Her giggles sound more like squeaks. These moments with Jade follow a formula.
THE WHEEL
"The summer was hot, the tourists were stupid, and Coney Island spun like liquid sugar in a cotton candy machine."