Unexpected Divergences

by Becky Neher

After he left her for another woman, she stopped hiding her newly-emerging gray hair and deepening wrinkles. She went to bed early, grew pansies, ate things with fiber. She bought comfy underwear. She started reading a book.

“She’s much older than you,” he had said.

At first, she had laughed.

Comfortably Alone Together

by Alexander Gerasimenko

Wish this moment would never pass. Cruising through the sunset, windows down, and one hand on the steering wheel. Love of my life rides shotgun, knowing I’ll eventually ask her to marry me. Not knowing when keeps her sparkly. The air is warm and infused with flowers, fresh on the skin as we flow through it; floating without an engine. The radio is off and we don’t talk for a while. Comfortably alone together. Guess that in the end neither one of us wants eternity, we just want life.

The Wasabi Effect

by Swetha Amit

I remember when my mother took me to a Japanese restaurant. She taught me to hold the chopsticks like a pen, scoop the sushi and gently dip it in wasabi. She complained about her nose being on fire when she had too much. She gulped ice water and warned me never to touch wasabi again. I think of her loud bouts of laughter followed by silent sobbing. Red marks on her wrist, forlorn eyes, painful conversations, the stench of urine in the bathtub. I think of how she rocked me to sleep. While I watched her close her eyes forever.

Remembrances from the Deck Overlooking the Yard

by David Klotzkin

The chimes jangled in the wind, and she suddenly remembered the bear.
On an autumn afternoon like this, the bear toppled the fence and ambled in. She’d marveled at it through the railing.
“It came in there,” she said aloud.
“I remember,” said her brother. “Pepper chased it off.”
“No!” she said. “We yelled and yelled, but it wouldn’t go until the cops used air horns.”
“What? No.”
“We didn’t have a dog then.”
They stared at each other, baffled.
The winds blew, the chimes tinkled, the shadows danced; now a dragon, now a horse, now a field of poppies.

Shedding

by Cameron Bertron

There is a girl with a lizard living inside her chest. Every night she must peel back the rind of skin above her ribcage to let it out otherwise, being nocturnal, it will patter over her lungs all night and keep her awake. It is a small, green anole. She used to delight in watching it cling to her sleeve or run over her crayons. But she was just a child. Now, she keeps it in all day. Even though she feels its impatience and, sometimes, the fish-bone thin hook of a claw as it squeezes between organs.