the gold chocolate by Marina Manoukian

her husband loved chocolate. she was always finding sweets in his jacket pocket. it was never a secret but always a surprise. more than the chocolate itself, her husband loved the smile on his granddaughter’s face as he revealed the shiny gold-wrapped chocolate from...

The Periodic Family by Claudia Monpere

My mother has been around more than 13 billion years. Once she was helium hydride, forming the first stars which were hotter and brighter than the sun. My mother—imagine! But now she is just hydrogen, the lightest element, the one with the simplest atomic...

When We Were Last Alive by Mileva Anastasiadou

before we gave up and died a little, we watched that funny show about old people and laughed our hearts out. We are now at the age those old people were on that show, and we do the same stupid things they did, we frown and give up and die like they died, and...

Mambo No. 5 by Edith-Nicole Cameron

I open the cooler door with my right hand as I attempt with my left to clear the shopping cart from oncoming traffic in the dairy aisle, and I’m nodding my head with feigned interest in my littlest’s chatter and so the child, an opportunist since his...

Small Loved Things by Pamela Painter

My daughter and I are standing in Ceely’s tiny apartment for the first time since Ceely’s death by suicide. Her schizophrenia was a road through thirty years, and a road out. Jill and I cry together as we wander around picking up a teacup, a book, a tiny...