“That’s his heart,” they said, needing no answer. It was warm in my hands, the pulsating memory still strong. I had never seen blood so red, not even my own.
But then, there was the boy’s life at stake and the man was obviously breaking the law. I realized I had shot him, that the whole problem had fallen into my la...
We are real people. We live in the aftermath of violence. We live with the consequences of too many guns and too few regulations. And the story doesn’t end the ...
The Second Amendment doesn’t cross your mind as Girlfriend 2 shakes and cries....
Redacted Relationship By Keith Hoerner
The clerk was stringy and gray. “I recommend the Jesus diet,” she offered, as we explained our goals which were, mainly, for him to outlive cancer. “You eat onl...
*Featured Artwork: from the series “Sonder Seclusion” By Faizan Adil. Project Definition: Sonder: The realization that each random passerby is livin...
Far down below were trees and shadows; just beneath our feet red ochre rocks and dust and stubborn patches of thistle, and a surprise, a handmade grave.
She needed to know more about where I began: my past as a refugee child.
I want to tell you about your death because I feel some guilt about the final events of that night. I have repressed the guilt in order to keep living but I nee...
I’d talked with firefighters about extension — how a fire spreads — all the while constructing, mentally rehearsing and refining an elaborate plan for my own de...
I am eight. I am eight, and I am an avocado in a flock of magpies and I want to be a magpie so badly that it makes my fingers curl. I want to know what it feels...
You must go to school. I’m too sick to go to school! I have eyes on the back of my head. I missed the bus! We can’t afford cable. I wasn’t watching TV!
My friend, however, already had a concrete notion what the pronoun "it" did. Rather than calling the rape—the one I had experienced months earlier—by its name, ...
But I only knew the mechanics of sex, not its consequences. Who does at thirteen?
TRIGGER WARNING: This #MeToo essay contains references to child sex trafficking and its effects on the writer. You will cry and, bit by bit, it will break your ...
Soon enough it’s clear he’s hellbent on spreading the rumor he fucked you—or is it fact? You’re a 13-year-old freshman who drank a pint of Southern Comfort, bla...
My mom tells me that I can choose who can come to my party. I can choose who can have cake. Tomorrow when I turn thirteen I will tell her that he can’t come to ...
I felt terror but not complete surprise. For a long while, part of me had expected to die like this. I recollected the stories my great-grandmother read from th...
He was a lurker, an expert lurker, my grandfather. He lurked in the dark, and during the day he lurked in empty corners. My earliest memory is of him, sitting o...
