A New Kind of Literary Pulse

Death.
The process and length of the decay of flesh, any flesh, depends. Little things. Big things. Many things. But generally once the rot has set in, this process is irreversible. You see ... [+]

The bottom of a closet is a welcoming place. I know - not the greatest sentiment for a queer person to express, but just try to hear me out on this one.
The hanging clothes hardly graze the tops ... [+]

My family liked the campsite at first: plenty of trees, level ground for our tent, a short walk to the bathroom. Though we didn’t like that buzzing sound. We chalked it up to the nearby power lines ... [+]

“I need to deposit money into the bank.” He said as he kept moving about his room and picking up objects and moving them somewhere else. I gestured to him to keep quiet and I tried to coax him ... [+]

It has been over eight years since my father has left his presence with us and on Earth. He was diagnosed with stomach cancer and his life was taken within one year of his diagnosis. My father was an ... [+]

My hands used to create magic. I think with the increasing demands of adulthood, they've had their spark pulled right out of them. My little sister's hands still glisten with it, but I fear he ... [+]

We may not all don crowns on our heads, but we all clothe ourselves in underwear. Underwear, I would argue, grants one as much power as—if not more power than—the jewel-encased headgear worn by ... [+]

The Robinson Era is a period of non-linear time that we keep returning to over and over again. Spend too much time in the Robinson Era, and we regress to the Green Room Era. Spend too little time in ... [+]

Loneliness.
You didn’t expect it to come at all.
You liked it at first—you were finally alone! You could finally catch up on your hundred hours of missed sleep. You no longer needed to ... [+]

Mama is inconsolable toward the end of our summer trips to Pakistan. It is as painful as watching a child getting ripped from the hands of her mother, except my mother is the child and her mother is ... [+]

A man wearing a short, black hat sits on the same bench as me. I sit on one end, and he sits on the other. The bench lines the long, tall widows that face the small parking lot attached to the ... [+]

It was after 10:30 at night. I was surrounded by towers of nondescript apartment complexes over 20 stories high, though the middle courtyard was graced with beautiful trees hiding maze-like ... [+]

At the age of five I was fearless. As a child, identity seemed fluid, and it felt limitless. We could be bold, or we could be random. The ways of expressing ourselves felt boundless. And while there ... [+]

“93, 94, 95...” I stared blankly at the ceiling, counting sheep in my head. “98, 99, 100...” My stomach did another gurgle, telling me that we wouldn’t have another normal lunchtime. I ... [+]

In 2010, the street artist Stephen Powers completed a series of murals as a love letter to the city of Philadelphia, his home. I had never heard of him before, but I’d seen these murals on my trips ... [+]

During my transition from being a Harvard lab technician to a Harvard graduate student in the summer of 2015, I went home to New York for three weeks of vacation. My last day there was sunny and not ... [+]

SNAP! At first, it did not even register. The world suddenly tilts, like looking through a camera while it drops, your vision spinning with it. Then, you are blindly wondering why you are on the ... [+]

I’m sitting on the couch, staring at the roof. One of my legs is on the table that is filled with cups and garbage. The plant next to my foot is dried. A slight light enters the room from the gap ... [+]