A New Kind of Literary Pulse

You never know when the last goodbye is. We think we have forever until suddenly we don't. We enter with purpose and leave with only memory. I wish I had seen the battle he was fighting before it ...  [+]

Hope is the killer that perches in the soul and slowly hacks away at the heart and never stops at all.   I met her while working for the university newspaper. She was an aspiring journalist, and I was ...  [+]

The house takes a day to dismantle. Goodwill gets the furniture. Meghan sets a ground rule for the rest: George is allowed three seconds to decide where each thing should go: in the car (to be driven ...  [+]

Josh is gone, but I see him everywhere. Even now, it's his reflection I see in the puddle as the storm brings me back to reality. I shiver. Seems I'm always cold these days. I need to get my shit ...  [+]

The witch lived alone in the shadow of the forest. Her cottage, with its crooked door and moss-covered shingles, was perched at the edge of a still, green pond with an overgrown orchard beyond. Only ...  [+]

Georgia lies in bed, eyes closed, curled into a ball, listening to the soft tick-tick-tick from the clock in the living room as it counts down the minutes until morning. The minutes tick into hours ...  [+]

You stare as the fence silently pulses, ready to shock curious sheep away. The pulse gives them time to retreat, to let go. If the power was continuous, you and the sheep would be stuck, glued to the ...  [+]

The last apparition of Halley's Comet was in 1986, approaching Earth as close as 0.4 astronomical units. Halley takes a long journey to visit us. The comet follows an elliptical orbit that reaches ...  [+]

On his first day at the Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation, twenty-five year old Masti Govind Swamy, named after the village of Masti, where his father, not he, was born, found to his ...  [+]

Your baby is due in two weeks. Naturally, I'm over the moon about this, but I'm also feeling a bit sentimental . . . hence this letter.   So here I am at the kitchen table, thinking about you and ...  [+]

They always say the final sense to go is hearing, but touch lasts right 'til the end. Not over the whole body, though; I can't feel Dot's hand in mine, but this fucking diaper itches like blazes. I ...  [+]

The realtor moves from room to room in silence. Charlotte and I follow, anxiously awaiting his verdict.   Through the kitchen, the living room, the study. Upstairs, in and out of bedrooms. He ...  [+]

Terrydale was a hamlet much too small to be located on any map, and so war came to it as it comes to such places—not through the trampling of armies over its quaint town square, or the burning of ...  [+]

The DeliverBot drops the box at my feet and wheezes out a metallic "Happy Birthday" before flying away. At first, I think it's a mistake, because it isn't my birthday. At least, I don't think it is ...  [+]

I had just gotten out of the gas station and bought what I usually bought on my little Sunday night trips—a pack of reds, a water bottle (one of the purified waters. Spring water is quite gross to ...  [+]

My daughters run across the hard-packed sand, their blonde hair—Maureen's hair—streaming out behind them. They are three little replicas of my wife. As always, the worry grips my heart with icy ...  [+]

"Can I get you anything?" Granny Marion asked from the kitchen. "I'm afraid I don't have much here."

"I'm alright," I called back to her, tugging at the neck of my varsity jumper. I'd realised on ...  [+]

The sisters had walked these trails many times when they were little. But this time, the older sister was walking with her boyfriend. The younger sister stayed in front, pretending not to be bothered ...  [+]

My friend used to ride the midnight bus so he could spend time with his dead sister.
He had been doing this for about five years, right after she was killed. Her boyfriend shot her one night ove ...  [+]

My mother told me I should never date a guy who didn't have his own car. She said that it set some bad precedent, mixed up the lines between provider and provided-for. There's nothing more ladylike ...  [+]