School continues, but your lessons are done. Your empty desk and chair are a reminder you’re no longer here.
Why did you play with that abandoned gun in the alley? Senseless tragedy put your ten-year timeline to an end.
A lesson learned too hard, one our class will never forget.
Shawnta S. Barnes is a literacy coach in Indianapolis Public Schools, an adjunct instructor at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis School of Education, and a 2016-2017 Teach Plus Teaching Policy Fellow.
She tore down each of her MISSING posters, cursing her own name more than her mother’s. She slinked beneath bridges, laid on the mattresses of marsh slime, or drifted into alleys.
Yet, she preserved the posters, her printed visages, because they documented the time, long ago, when she could smile.
Caroline Cao is an Earthling residing and surviving under the fickle weather of League City, TX. When she’s not doing poetry or researching techno-babbles for sci-fic drafts, she’s out swing dancing or experimenting with ramen noodles. She nudges you to scan through her film and writing portfolio.
The notes by the headstone say “Thank You”, anonymous followers grateful because her death finally opened their eyes.
Mine says “Sorry”, for even as an enemy of the state, a hero of the people, or an urban legend, she was still my daughter and I failed to keep her safe.
Mohamed is an avid reader who found a calling in writing, both fiction and non-fiction. Mohamed is writing a short story collection titled “Broken Men”. He also wrote The Café, his first novel in Arabic. See more on his blog.
“Missing in action. Presumed dead.” Five words that extinguished hope and shattered my heart. It was the presumption that did it.
Days, weeks, and months passed. Acceptance would not come. Pain increased.
The doorbell cut across my tortured reverie. There stood Teddy, my son.
My knees buckled. They presumed wrong!
Linda Pottinger has had numerous, diverse articles published in national, regional, and local magazines, trades journals, and hobbyist magazines. She has self-published two books, an autobiography and an anthology of poetry. She has recently engaged in writing short fiction stories and hopes to expand into script-writing in the near future.
I brought her some West Virginian wildflowers fresh from the Star City exit on I-79.
She cradled them like an infant wrapped in burlap. The little bluets danced along the dewy glow of her paling face. “What should we name them?”
“Honey …” She wanted to name everything.
Ever since.
Amber D. Tran graduated from West Virginia University in 2012, where she specialized in lyrical non-fiction and contemporary poetry. She currently lives in Alabama with her husband and miniature dachshund. Her first novel, Moon River, will be released this fall.
They had to cut me to take you.
I heard your cry fade down the hallway.
It haunts me nightly.
I bought you cards every birthday, not knowing if I should buy for a son or daughter.
You are fifty years old today.
I still crave my beautiful bastard baby.
Joan is an educator in Australia who loves the beauty of language.
Holding the colorful bracelet, Ellie remembers: its green beads had matched his eyes.
In the car, they’d laughed, hearts beating for tomorrow. Her wrist wrapped in sky.
“The next jewelry’ll be for your finger.”
Now, scraping red—paint? blood?—from the bracelet, Ellie regrets ever wanting more than him, then.
Kerry Graham lives, teaches, writes, runs, and photographs in Baltimore, MD. Connect with her on Instagram and Twitter.
“Buying that bookcase?” she asks.
Her body’s language is an easy read:
too much disappointment and heartache.
For her, my “yes” is just
another defeat.
Then, folding herself
into the crowd, she leaves me
with this new hole in my heart,
where before was a simple
and shallow shopper’s joy.
Matthew, despite his best efforts to ruin his life, has failed. He wonders if his good fortune, finding his disembodied heart in Maine, is good karma from previous incarnations, or is grace. He suspects it is grace.
My daughter lives thirty minutes away. She’s got two children now. We haven’t spoken in twenty years. The last time we were together we hunted Monkey Bees in the backyard, turning things over, looking for a Monkey Bees’ nest. It was a made-up game. There was no way to win.
Over the years Bob Thurber’s work has received a long list of awards and prizes. His most recent book is a collection of brief stories titled “Nothing But Trouble.” His first novel, “Paperboy: A Dysfunctional Novel,” was recently rereleased. Visit BobThurber.net.
Inside the empty cottage, shadows of ghosts: smudges where your picture used to hang; discolored floorboards where your cactus stood guard; a sepia burn on the kitchen counter; air stained with your perfume.
Six hundred bucks to show for a lifetime’s work.
Your gifts whisper to me in my dreams.
Monica is a sustainability manager by day and a writer by night, who used to visit Cape Cod every summer and every Christmas.