A Flower on the Moon, Maybe by Paul-André Betito

In the soft light I see you breathing, blinking, your sights seemingly locked onto the waning crescent moon beyond the window.

 

Spring Cleaning by Powell Burke

Katelyn found the state finals trophy wedged between the wall and the back of the vanity. She'd knocked the box cutter back there, reached to catch it, and there was the trophy.

 

What We Do For Love by George Dila

I hadn't planned on making a confession, but there was a pause in the conversation, and I impulsively filled it.
“I did an awful thing on the way here,” I said.

 

Rosko by Zdravka Evtimova

There was a black whirlpool in the Struma River which was not far from our house. The place was wild, overgrown with stubborn willows.

 

Oxi Day by Joseph Giordano

The day after the political rally in Athens, sunlight and the coo of a mourning dove opened my eyes. I was naked, next to Kia or was it Karina?

 

Coupletime! by Nathan Leslie

Blotches of rain slopping the windshield. Wipers smear them silly. The satellite radio is out. Forgot to pay the bill.

 

Where There Is Smoke by Edwin Madu

Before, if you stood at Ogwubudo you could see three of the five paths that lead to the five clans that make up Agulu. You could see these roads because Ogwubudo is what the educated ones now call the village square; the place where the sun seems the brightest, the hottest.

 

Rain Enough by Wendell Mayo

When I arrived at the secondary school in the Administrator’s grumble-storm of a village, he removed his brown-rimmed glasses and rubbed his eyes with two sharp knuckles. I took advantage of all his eye rubbing to pinch-wring water from my forehead.

 

Robert Hall, This Season by Robert Radin

My father’s remains were in an urn in a wall in a remote memorial park in the Imperial Valley. I had spent most of my life wanting to get him out of there, but my mother was his next of kin and refused to give her consent.

 

Moving Day by Anna Saikin

Somewhere past Lampasas, Paige realized that she had forgotten the directions to Glenwood cemetery. She’d been on the road for an hour and a half and was tempted to turn around.

 

David and the Three Maidens by Lewis Turco

They were older than they acted, but the three young women were being rather giddy. They had all recently graduated from a famous college in the Adirondacks, and now here they were in Florence, the first stop on the tour of Europe their families had agreed to treat them to as a graduation gift.

 

A Sickness by V.S. Yanovsky
Translated by Isabella Levitin

On the way downstairs, Borisov noticed once again how his neighbor was fearfully shielding her children from him on the narrow landing. "Disgusting! After all, I'm not a leper, those fools!"