A New Kind of Literary Pulse

I tiptoed out of the car, immediately felt the force of frigid air against my face, heard the gravel crunch beneath my shoes. It was just me, the sound of my shifting footsteps, and a vast, dark ... [+]

The familiar scent of earl gray tea sends me back to my grandma's living room. When I was in elementary school, I'd come over multiple times a week and we'd sit on her off-white couch drinking black ... [+]

I.
After nigiri, he took the black stone. He wins more when he plays black; I felt happy for him.
The game begins at half past nine. Each player has three hours. If they exceed the time limit ... [+]

I didn’t tell anyone that I cried.
After we’d come back from the store, my roommates each reluctantly headed back to their rooms, to the homework they’d left undone. I lingered in the living ... [+]

My bones belong on the East Coast. Or maybe they belong to it. Whatever the case, they certainly seem to think it’s the only proper place to be. Bones can think things like that, I suppose, even ... [+]

I remember when I moved to Utah.
I had gotten in the moving van, stepping off the road of my childhood home for the last time. Now, I hear the hammering thrum of the vehicle drive away, my ... [+]

Youth activities at church always aimed to teach us some new skill. We rarely fantasized about service projects and even the most honorable among us would likely miss a “wonderful opportunity” if ... [+]

We were driving down Highway 37 on our way back from Dawson City, Yukon. We had been on the road for almost three weeks and we were spent. Long days of driving long B.C. roads that carried few people ... [+]

The sky dimmed dauntingly, the depiction dark. A stagnant air was wallowed in.
I observed it out the car window; eerie, or perhaps just foggy. Its hiss was unmissable. It was previously a ... [+]

Though I’m always game to try new foods—strange sea creatures boiled in wine, caviar on crackers, beef carpaccio—there’s a solid list of foods I cannot stand, and this makes me feel like a ... [+]

Homesickness is a funny thing.
In the eyes of the American government, I’m an alien. A legal one—I have a student visa to prove it—but an alien still, as though I arrived in a spaceship, and ... [+]

As a child, I assumed that I had done some extraordinary deed to make it on Santa’s platinum edition nice list, which meant presents not only in December, but a bonus delivery during his off-season ... [+]

Beauty. What is beautiful? It is said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Beauty is determined individually. Beauty is not universal.
Beauty captivates me. What is beautiful in my eyes ... [+]

If I took you on a tour of my childhood, our first stop would be my childhood home, a small place with big memories. I’d show you the attic where my brother and I played or the room we shared. I’d ... [+]

It’s 7:37pm, and I am standing on the arrow pointing the direction to shop in the aisle at Walmart. It smells like cleaner and cookies from the surrounding aisles. In my right hand I hold nothing ... [+]

I used to be scared of angels and the way they keep records of your thoughts, because there's things they know that I'd be unequivocally ashamed of. But at length I've come to the conclusion that all ... [+]

The red rock swirls around me. It is sedentary and yet it has what my artist friends refer to as movement, line of action, directional motion. The soft, water worn contours are hard as the stone they ... [+]

The hills slipped easily under our wheels.
Sometimes you get this feeling, an itch. A kind of restlessness that wants to crawl out from under your skin. I think this feeling is familiar to most ... [+]