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.
Student Work: Fiction
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."
DITCHES DUG
"Ditches here were layered; you got a front-line ditch, reserve line, and then artillery just outside the ditches. Each ditch was only about five feet wide, but they went on for miles to the flanks. This ditch was part of one that went clear across France and Belgium. Some people take comfort in the ditches’ snaked length, in their womb-like innards and phallic shape. At some point in the war every inch of it had been moved."
Field Journal
"We went to Iceland knowing there had been a history of elf sightings. We were a team of highly trained professionals searching for a truth we had only heard rumors of, and when we found it, we struggled with the decision to disseminate the information."
Between: An Interactive Text
"It's been several months since you took over your late grandfather's farmstead, and you're still getting used to the scarcely forgiving landscape."