Prose
“They fail to vivify my prison. Ah, not prison. After busy work days and long hours of restless labor, I find myself somehow excited to return to this hell I call home.”
Pradhyumn Pradeep
“On the day a man with a sad face dressed as a patient lumberjack carved a hole into our kitchen and dragged our oven outside into his Goliath truck, my sister told me she wanted to learn how to bake.”
Anshi Purohit
“Buoyant violin started to thrum, bringing life to the floor as lords and ladies were swept to dance in a sunrise of silk. Amongst the lively chords that floated through the air, a young woman stood propped against the glass balcony doors.”
Rosalyn Gardner
Poetry
“let me say it / like i mean it—in the water / your left foot lies lame / and there is something like blood / all over my hands.”
Julia Glazebnik
“that’s what summer is meant to be / lonely freedom, melancholy deception / thinking to yourself, this autonomy has been fooling me”
Eva Lam
Unrequited Love in the Night Sky
“It is simple: humanity is in love with this star, / and believes it shines brighter every day / just for them.”
Eva Lam
“sweeten my phlegm / sticky chords of honey envelop my thorax”
Katherine Zhao
Subject: If you wrote Feel Free for my/our midnight mind(s)
“Unlike you, I still can’t write anything, for I still can’t / write a sentence that is too beautiful to be condemned / as interminable”
Keyi Wang
“Girls in the hallway try to forget / Each other’s opal tears, / And that salty way they taste.”
Violet Hetherington
“I think / being strong / is a curse”
Amruta Dhuke
You Will Never Stop Murdering Me
“When I find the girl who murdered me / I am going to dig my sharpened nails into her cheek / I am going to make her bleed”
Arianna Williams
“i’ve been exhausted for years / not finding remedy in sleep or sweet”
Lily Wilson
“It’s the absence of sound, so deafening, profound, / Lost in the labyrinth of tangled thoughts and fears”
Ellie Yang