A New Kind of Literary Pulse

She had mentioned this park being her favourite, yet she is still not here, and the agonising pain in my heart keeps on hurting. Where could she be? I was 18 when I came to this country, with a few ...  [+]

The ocean breeze hit her first. Sharp, salted, alive.  This feels... oddly familiar.   "Is it home?" she thought. The sky stretched in streaks of dull blue and white, mesmerizing--yet her mind ...  [+]

The little boy on the stage was the son of a famous actor, the kind college girls used to press their lips against posters of, who was one evening found face down in a hotel swimming pool like ...  [+]

The stars circle him. It's not just stars. It's galaxies, he knows; galaxies and nebulae and burning spheres of pure fire, so distant they form only pinpricks of light even this close. He thinks he ...  [+]

I choked.   The room wasn't even that cold, but my hands felt numb as I stared at the question paper. Pens were already scribbling around me like a starting gun had gone off in a race I hadn't even ...  [+]

Her eyes burned from hours of staring at the laptop screen, a dull ache pulsing behind her temples — part headache, part frustration from memorizing endless drug names. The library was silent, the ...  [+]

  I hate this. "Miss Tanaka, are you afraid of me?" I hate the step he takes forward, placing one polished shoe in front of the other with the confidence of a man who has nothing left to lose. I hate ...  [+]

When she arrives at the hospital, Lily is not asked to wait in front of the operating room. She strides in on the dot, protected by an entourage of two secretaries answering questions of appointments ...  [+]

The wobble of the homemade raft and the pain of bare knees on plywood set my teeth on edge. Seeking stability, I looked at the water in front of us. The lake was turning to river, and the whisper of ...  [+]

Building materials in Ali's city told a story. Mosques and churches were always made of limestone, so were some old stock Arab homes; the old city hall was coralstone; new money bought multistoreys ...  [+]

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 ...  [+]

It was October of 1992, and Betty had a horrible cold.  She was coughing constantly. It was so bad that it would keep her up at night. Worse than that, though, was the fact that it was keeping he ...  [+]

She is clothed in a dreary, dark shade. Little wrinkles paint her face, long and needle thin. She is weak and frail, yet undeniably mine.    Perhaps the others like winter, but I don't. The sky ...  [+]

Tears stream down her face as she tries to finish a paper due at midnight. An overwhelming sadness consumes her. She's finally found the one she wants to keep forever, the one who signals to he ...  [+]

What a packed schedule I have had this year. My last stop today is in the aftermath of violent protests. There are so many names here that are on my list. 
Just two days ago, these streets still ...  [+]

i've never fixed a flat tire before i told everyone i knew how to
i told a girl who was the most beautiful girl i'd seen in the last 5 minutes that i knew how to fix a flat and i told her this ...  [+]

8.21pm:
Roughly three and a half hours till midnight. My fingers hurt from all the typing and the use of the trackpad on my laptop this past week. But above all else, my eyes hurt the most. I would ...  [+]

"Nobody said this was going to be easy, Robert," Anne said, locking her stern gaze on him.   Moving closer, she continued in a softer tone, almost as if echoing the voice in his head, "Think about it ...  [+]