Social(ly) Media(ted) Diptych by Robert Detman

1. Selfie What are you to do when you’ve spent most of your life primarily looking at one face, blemished, aging slowly but confidently, negotiating the trials (limited, one hopes) and tribulations, the glories of work, and love, and struggle, the visits to the farthest reaches of the world, the...

One of Us by Jason Arment

Platoon 3111's head Drill Instructor sat on a throne of foot-lockers in the middle of the squad bay. It was early in boot camp, before the days counted as Training Days, or T-Days. Recruits knew a lot could happen between T-Day 0 and graduation, but we still imagined every scenario...

Nail by Sarah Sorensen

You would only give me the toenail after I promised that I would not eat it. Plucked from your foot with tweezers, you lost the whole nail. It didn’t come off clean. Removed in painful shards, the nail bed beneath was revealed in such vulnerable pinkness that it felt obscene...

Guess Why the Dog is Crazy by Miranda Forman

I’m scrubbing dishes in the orange evening when my phone throws a tantrum on the countertop. Here it is. Our president has finally launched the nukes. It’s time to shelter in bunkers we don’t have. Soapy water drips onto the screen before my unblurring eyes process the messages. The world...

Restoration by Elizabeth Vignali

You rip up the old beige carpet, matted down with fifty years of footsteps. Dust whirls up: bantam bits of grandparents and babies and pets and dinosaurs and rocks from space. The history of the universe and yesterday’s Chihuahua dandruff are equal here, spinning gold in the light from the...

Part-Time Brother by Alexia Kemerling

Our house on Austin Road had red bricks and green shutters. It was a ranch-style house, with just one floor and the longest hallway in the world. The hallway began in the living room: cozy red couches, framed family portrait of the four of us dressed in matching blue jeans...

Law of Conversation by Tianli Kilpatrick

According to the Laws of Thermodynamics, the sum of the world’s entropies creates a central zero. If I position my feet just right, heels pressed against bags of dog and cat food, my ten-year-old body fits inside the kitchen pantry. I stand silent, watch through the dark brown wooden slats,...

Nostalgia for the Misremembered by N. West Moss

Every memory has an agenda to either comfort us or settle scores. We post pictures of ourselves when we were young to remind people that we were once desirable. In nursing homes, residents tape up photos of themselves in their combat fatigues or wedding gowns, slim and young. Maybe they...