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Weekly Contest #342
The New York City skyline looks smaller than I thought it would from above. As I lift up out of JFK into the autumn streaked clouds, I think about how overwhelming and magnificent it is when you’re in the city, and how inconsequential it seems when you are miles above it. Although I know it’s impossible, I stare into the lights below me and imagine I can see the rooftop of my Queens apartment. I can almost convince myself I can make out the shape of the hospital from here, and I can nearly feel the preternatural chilliness and sterile air. ...
Weekly Contest #333
My maman could bake stars into her madeleines. She taught me her secret recipe when I was eleven years old, and nodded and smiled and dreamed about blonde haired Samuel from school while she browned butter til it was flecked with gold and zested lemons so yellow they looked like sunshine. She folded butter and vanilla and eggs into flour white as snow, and tried to pass along magic to someone who did not care. When they were finished, she called me downstairs so I could be the one to pull them out of the oven. When the door opened, the smel...
Weekly Contest #331
The horses had been put up, covered in wool stable blankets and surrounded with extra hay, their feedbags filled with oats and molasses. The barn was cold when he brought them in, but within minutes their body heat would press against the faded wooden walls and they would be warm during the night. The white egg yolk sun had promised snow tonight, and despite his long list of sins, neglect of his animals was not one of them. He brought the dogs in, and they went straight to the woodstove to curl up, noses tucked into soft fur. He closed the ...
Weekly Contest #327
“I want to be a squash this year,” Hazel tells me. I’m sipping coffee on the porch, pumpkin spice creamer, frothed to perfection. A dash of cinnamon. You used to tease me. Basic, you’d say. No one really likes pumpkin spice, you’d say, if people really loved it they would have it year round, not just in the fall. It’s just the idea you like. You didn’t drink it on principle. Men don’t like pumpkin spice, you’d say. It’s the idea you don’t like, I’d say. “Mommy, did you hear me? Can I be a squash this year?” Hazel rests her hand on my leg. Ma...
Weekly Contest #263
I was your hero when I let my body break open and bear you screaming into this world. My power was the cord that threaded between my legs and into your stomach, beautiful and vivid evidence of the gift I gave you. For six beautiful moments you lay on my deflated stomach and screamed life into my swollen breasts, begging to sustain you. Every move you made I felt reflected with a tug in my own abdomen, ghost memories of when you tumbled through my womb, and not a hiccup could go unfelt. I was your hero until the midwife turned you on yo...
Weekly Contest #262
Summer 1955Malibu, CAAna, Age 10 Dear Diary, My name is Ana, I am 10, I have red hair and freckles that I hate. My favorite color is pink, even though Grandma says it makes my freckles stand out. My birthday is February 2nd, and it’s always too cold to have a party. I have a party for my half birthday instead, August 2nd, at Grandma’s summer cottage in California. Usually the party is just my parents and grandparents and brother Nate and sister Karen, but it’s still fun because I get to pick a cake and I get presents and am allowed to swim i...
Weekly Contest #260
Katarina Ysabella Lynch had too many letters to herself. It just wasn’t fair to the Jon’s and the Meg’s and the Ruth’s that she should own twenty-one letters and seven vowels when most people could barely claim half that. She blamed her parents for this selfish part of her character, and she felt the need to share with people who learned her name that if she could have, she would not have picked something so grandiose. Katarina learned how to spell her name when she was four years old, a whole year before she went to kindergarten and wo...
Weekly Contest #257
I didn’t want to save you, Papa, I hope you know that. On that beautiful summer day, August bursting into September with all the fanfare of goldenrod, I was truly happy. I ran up your cracked steps, skipping the silver lines like a child mindful of my mother’s back, feeling lighter than I had in years.I was about to tell you that you were going to be a grandfather, that Julian and I were going to move to your neighborhood, that you would be able to come over for barbecues and pool days and first toddling steps. I was about to tell you t...
Weekly Contest #254
“Olivia,” he says, smiling at me. “I’ve written a vow.”He is wearing a cream colored suit, and there is an explosion of violets tucked into his breast pocket. He is so close to me I can smell them, and the sweet warmth of his skin. The minister bows his head and steps back, allowing us as much time as is required. After all, this is about me and him and no one else.“Hunter,” I breathe, “I wrote one too.”Sun had pearls for teeth, and his hair was made of tamed fire. He smelled of brimstone and bonfires and hearths burning too hot when h...
Shortlisted for Contest #248 ⭐️
My late husband never did give me his green thumb. I remember when we first met, I was amazed at his ability to coax life into blighted tomatoes, pray seedlings into sprouting in lackluster soil, and convince frostbitten blueberry bushes to produce gallons. My late husband grew up on a ranch in Southern Texas, and his sweet drawl and lazy eyes persuaded me to have not one and not two but three drinks with him that sleepy summer night in Alabama. He was visiting the University of Alabama where I was a student and had lived all my ...
Weekly Contest #247
Somewhere during our second year in space, we started talking about astrology. One might think that flying past countless stars each waking minute would make us wonder at our own heavenly correlations, but we were too busy being proper astronauts to think about anything except propulsion and coordinates. National Geographic had run a special on us before we left, on New Year's Day, 2086. Star Light, Star Bright, Guide our Travelers Tonight, the headline read. It was not an overall hopeful piece, since most people assumed we would die. This f...
Weekly Contest #244
The school bus has always reminded me of a dragon, yellow and fierce, and not guaranteed to spit you back out again once it swallows you up. Every morning, when I stand at the end of my driveway and wait for it, I close my eyes and imagine that it will not come. I am the last person to be picked up, and somehow the last person to be dropped off, even though that doesn’t make sense to me, so sometimes I pretend that Mr. Tim, our bus driver, will skip me for convenience's sake. I create elaborate scenarios in my mind; accidents and detou...
Weekly Contest #241
This is a story about the day that I learned that the human soul is unexpectedly wonderful, that God is real but entirely made up, and that I am not anyone but who I am right now. The story doesn’t start at the final epiphany of course, they never do.Imagine how easy that would be, and how boring to read. There is no great joy without the contrast of grief. At least, that’s what I’ve been told. Nothing is set in stone, if the hitchhiker taught me anything, it was that.Oh yes, this is a story about a hitchhiker, and me, a twenty- six yea...
Weekly Contest #238
Trigger Warning: Miscarriage. CHLOEBefore we fell in love, Evan and I spent two months talking to each other over text and phone calls. After we fell in love we spent three more months talking over text, and all night phone calls. We spent three years talking to each other through morning breath, evening whispers, late night confessions, ordinary daytime passing remarks. Our vows took almost fifteen minutes to say a piece. If someone attempted to calculate the sheer number of minutes we have spent talking, I’m sure that it would equal years ...
Weekly Contest #235
Jeremiah is waiting for Susie to meet him. He has one leg propped up on the park bench, and his right hand braced against the thigh of the said leg, his fingers pressing into his skin as though it can reach the muscle underneath. Jeremiah didn’t want to get up to run this morning, but Susie never doesn’t want to get up to run, and the thought of her thinking he can’t keep up with her is unbearable. Jeremiah and Susie were chosen, long before they met, before they even lived in the same town, before they were even born, to love ...
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