Ripples in the Water ~ Dana Lynch

Message boards on my laptop illuminated my face, columns of white and yellow and red. I rubbed my forehead as I stared at a message from my friends from the States. I pressed my fingers to the keys and began to type. “Want to come walking with us?”  My mom stood at...

Your Average Relaxing Canoe Ride ~ Katie Volz

My cousin Amelia and I, still drenched in the day’s aromatic cocktail of sunscreen and Deet, walked down to the dock. We walked slowly, watching for skittish garter snakes, and coiled, patient rat snakes that favored the overgrown grass surrounding the shed. We...

My First Love ~ Emma Scott

I was ten, but I remember the day like it was yesterday. My dad and I rested on a cold, metal bench just outside the airport, waiting for a bus to take us away from the unfamiliar fumes that engulfed the surrounding air. Fog consumed the night. Flickering street lamps...

Inflation of the Spoken Word ~ Elliot Rose

In the bank of words, apologies are the gold standard. They heal rifts carved by a thousand sentences and silences, and they often create rifts of their own, if given at the wrong time. Many save their apologies, hoarding it in piles stuck under their tongues — like a...

The Ache of Endings ~ Kate Irwin

“So much of life is just things ending,” I told someone last week. I said it last week, but I said it a few months ago, too. And I thought about it last night, and three mornings before that. And I also thought about it a lot last year. I said it aloud to everyone...