Issue 22 / Summer 2020 i. It is 6:00am and I am in the woods. This is not unusual. Often I find myself here, walking a well-worn park trail on the northwest side of DC during that time of morning when the light is both gentle and bright, like a miracle freshly...
Issue 22 / Summer 2020 Hey kiddo, I’m not going to talk about what happened. I figure you’ve got enough of that everywhere else what with all the cameras staking out the building in the morning, the counselors they’ve got in the corners of all the rooms where your...
Issue 22 / Summer 2020 I swallow joy in pill-capsules, two a night, hoping that while I sleep—if I sleep—the joy will seep into the empty cavities of my body and stop my bones from trembling in the morning when my dreams of somewhere else dissolve into the reality of...
Issue 22 / Summer 2020 The little girl and boy were screaming. Not the bad screaming. Not Mia’s screaming. Lucretia stood in the outer schoolyard, looking through the fence that separated her from the scene of the crime she had created two months prior. Of all...
Issue 22 / Summer 2020 Pouring myself another cup of coffee, I scanned the letter I’d just pulled from its envelope. “Dearest Melinda, love of my life, salvation of my soul,” it began. This prisoner really was laying it on thick. Five pages of hackneyed declarations...
