According to fiction writer Neil Gaiman, “Stories are like spiders, with all they long legs, and stories are like spiderwebs, which man gets himself all tangled up in but which look pretty when you see them under a leaf in the morning dew, and in the elegant way that they connect to one another, …
American writer Madeleine L’Engle told us, “Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving.” Below are a few we found this week that force us to agree: An excerpt on Lit Hub from Melissa Broder’s upcoming book on love, marriage, sex, monogamy, and illness that, seriously, you can’t miss: “But we can’t freeze the way …
Part of me still couldn’t fathom that our life together was done, still believed we lived in that cramped third-floor apartment, two floors above the James Spader lookalike who held open mic poetry readings every Friday evening in his living room and once asked if you’d ever read Madame Bovary. Across the street sat the …
In the tank, you watch the whale circle behind you. You tilt your head around trying to follow him in the water. Yellow streams of sunlight cascade over the black and white torpedo that is coming at you. Today, Dawn Brancheau will drown during a clear, sunny afternoon toward the end of the “Believe” orca …
Fish can drown. Well, they suffocate in water in which there is little or no oxygen dissolved but, technically, water suffocates humans as well. The gills of fish can even process oxygen from the air but the delicate structures dry and are destroyed and then the animal dies. We can’t take a single breath under …
We met Officer Hughes the first day Henry had a “Bad Sleep,” that’s what we call it, because it sounds a lot less menacing than “night terrors.” Henry was about two hours into his nap. I was working out back in the studio when he screamed so loudly that Tabitha Peyton, two doors over, called …
The thirty-aught-six dangled loose as a length of rope from the boy’s arm while he high-stepped through the weed-choked yard. He gripped the rifle by its forestock, and as he went it tilted like a lever, ground and sky alike passing between its sights. Occasionally the aim of its barrel crossed paths with his face. …
My thighs touch too close for comfort. Hip bones buried in my sides, old handlebars or the bronze gates to a hungry woman. Pull, she says, come closer. I do not bleed, anymore I maneuver this daunting vessel and I am starved. Please, come closer. I want to disappear with the reptiles My large …
The wheels on the bike squeaked rhythmically as she headed home, passing yellow buses stopped at the streetlight in front of the middle school. Occasionally friends in window seats called out from the buses, or classmates who recognized her and just wanted to be loud. She waved back, feeling like Miss Teen USA. She was …
It’s true I made you up as I went along. All the more reason, I say, that I should be able to make you go away when I want. But you have proved to have a solidity not normally associated with the imaginary realm. I know that when we first met you were just an …