TKWLI I press play in the middle of the iPhone voice recording taken on that swampy summer afternoon, and that scene, emblazoned in my brain, re-enacts itself. I was twenty-three years old and feeling far too young. My sweaty thighs suctioned to the peeling black pleather couch. Swaddled in blankets, my dad’s skeletal frame occupied […]
Category: Summer 2024 CNF
S Graham
Waves It was the principal of my high school, or the assistant principal, a teacher, the chaplain, one of them who came to my class and retrieved me. As I rose from my desk, he or she said to bring my bag along, and it was at that moment, or maybe the one before it, […]
Lauren Saxon
Roadkill My girlfriend snaps when she sees roadkill. She used to do a single clap, but that felt weird. Like I was applauding the death, so now she snaps. Just once. I add the sound her fingers make to the list of things I love about her. Decide to start doing it too (snapping), and […]
Jennifer Steil
Last Summer Home Inspired by “What’s Love Got to Do?” by Richard Blanco All that summer I wondered why the gentle green mountains around my parents’ home weighed on me so darkly. In the room my dad cleared out for me, leaving me two empty drawers, I woke in a panic, trying to figure out […]
