Through Her Eyes

My grandmother’s living room sits like a shrine of family history in front of me. Vacation candids and graduation portraits stare…

She Said

I. All the Girls Were Doing It

On the bed. On the floor. In the shower. In the backseat of mama’s car. Hell, anywhere that was quiet enough for five minutes. All the girls were doing it. You didn’t want to be the girl who wasn’t doing it, and if you weren’t doing it, you would be…

Just Breathe

YYou’re eleven when you start running, one week after your mom’s funeral. Your dad has been sober for six days. Last night you watched him pour the last Jack Daniel’s down the drain. Later, in bed, you pretended not to hear the glass breaking.

The House on Drexel

Nonfiction by Andrea Morgeson

At age twenty-one and a half, car rides on family vacations have dominated a sizable portion of my young life. I am curled up in the passenger’s seat with my forehead pressed and sliding against the warm glass, jostling…

Everything Happens for a Reason

Poetry by Caitlin Reed

Back Talk

Fiction by Elizabeth Hamilton

After Mom and Dad left, Nan started talking to the dust.
At first it wasn’t too concerning. Nan was eighty-four after all; she was bound to lose it eventually. She sat in her rocking chair in front of the television like she had every…

Ice Queen

Nonfiction by Samantha Tetrault

Trip

New Orleans, takeoff
in something like 60 minutes.
It’s recommended to eat something first
cheese grits — cheese G.R.I.T.S.
for Girls Raised In The South,
(no up-up-appetite)
we are south, levee level
who decided to build
this beaded bourbon city
below sea level?

Dragon Tales

I’m staring into the eyes of a boy that just professed his love for me — my first real boyfriend — and all I can think about are dragons. The words seep out of him slowly. “I love you.” They are thick and heavy, like globs of tar leeching from his lungs. His shoulders visibly rise, like those three…

Girl, 16, Self-Immolates

Fiction by Presley Christine