Mother and Fawn

by Angie Yingst

It all makes me feel old and brand new, like a fawn, spots like code across my back, and my legs not quite strong enough to hold my own weight and yet hours away from running.

The Salt God's Daughter

by Ilie Ruby

It was as possible to miss someone in front of you as it was to miss someone who had left. It was also possible to miss someone who had not yet been born. This I had learned.

The Testament of Mary

by Colm Toibin

Already, what was to occur weighed on me. At times, however, I forgot about it, I let my mind linger over anything at all only to find that what I was moving towards was waiting to spring as a frightened animal will spring. It came like that, in sudden jolts and shocks. And then it came more slowly, more insidiously. It entered my consciousness, it edged its way into me as something poisonous will crawl along the ground. On one of the nights during my journey I wandered out under the sky which was lit with stars and I believed for a moment that soon these stars would cease to glitter, that the nights of the future would be dark, that the world itself would undergo a great change, and then I quickly came to see that the change would happen only to me and to the few who knew me; it would be only us who would look at the sky at night in the future and see the darkness before we saw the glitter. We would see the glittering stars as false and mocking, or as bewildered themselves by the night as we were, as left-over things confined to their place, their shining nothing more than a sort of pleading.

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It seemed astonishing to me that I carried a burden that no one could instantly see, that I must have looked ordinary to everybody I saw who did not know me, that everything was held inside.

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I asked myself if there was anything I could do to pretend that this was not happening, that it had happened in the past to someone else, or that it was going on in a future I would never have to live through.

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I had been made wild by what I saw and nothing has ever changed that. I have been unhinged by what I saw in daylight and no darkness will assuage that, or lessen what it did to me.

We Learn Nothing

by Tim Kreider

Our lovers are summoned up by the most primal and naked parts of ourselves. Introducing these people to our friends and family is, in a way, more heedlessly exhibitionist than posting nude photos or sex tapes online; it's like letting everyone watch our uncensored dreams.

The Hidden Messages in Water

by Masaru Emoto

What we imagine in our minds becomes our world.

Scrape-art

by Kate Inglis

I fell in love with a baby and I couldn't figure it.

It wasn't the highly practiced detached indifference of the past five years: yeah cute whatever. He could have been mine, you know those babies? The ones who look at you all still and goggle-eyed and they could have been yours. I held him under the guise of helping his mother but I wasn't helping his mother. I was helping myself. I looked over my shoulder and they were all busy so I put my nose to the top of his head for a sniff. Just to check. Yes. Ggrrrmph and I felt a string of drool ooze down across one knuckle, then another. Raaaaaaagh.

The Mansion of Happiness: A History of Life and Death

by Jill Lepore

In Man Versus Death, being clever helps, but the best you can hope for is to prolong the game. Death always wins. Death is a bastard. Death cheats.

The Patron Saint of Liars

by Ann Patchett

Yesterday I doubted what she had said about me, but today I believed.

"Maybe she won't know," I said. "She'll be asleep and they'll take the baby away from her and she'll never know."

"You always know," Sister Evangeline said.

The Flight of Gemma Hardy

by Margot Livesey

Why did I always need to be valiant? Why couldn't I have a home, like other people?

The Naming

by Alison Croggon

"Come Maerad. It is better far to put away fear than to be driven by it. You know that."

Yes, I know that, Maerad thought sardonically. But I'm tired of having to be brave when really I'm so terrified I scarce know what to do. She swallowed hard, and then stood and drew her sword.

Six Word Story

by Ernest Hemingway

For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.

The Princetta

by Anne-Laure Bondoux

The waves lapping at the rocks made their perpetual murmur. Above the ship the sun was still shining, but down below, the crew was crushed by the weight of a terrible truth: in both the Known and the Unknown Worlds, living things could die, suffer, love, hate, struggle or surrender. Only nature itself never changed. Despite tragedy and torment, there would always be the waves, and the sun would always rise and set.

Hush

by Donna Jo Napoli

The day goes on in slow, deliberate work. The people pull together, letting go of their grief. Either these are callous folk or they know a bottomless well of courage.

Metapatterns

by Tyler Volk

Borders function as bulwarks against forces of disruption. They cloak creatures and their internal parts against the ravages of the exterior world--the ionizing, lysing, dissolving, jolting, combusting, dispersing, bursting, rotting, eating, and crushing world. Borders hold at bay all that would destroy the difference between being and environment; they prevent universal homogenization.

Blood Roses

by Francesca Lia Block

Daisy said, "You're not fucked up, Yummy. Your world is fucked up. It is very fucked up. It is a very, very fuckity uppity world and you are just responding normally to its psychotic vibe. Do you hear me? Because this is very important. This is something you need to know in order to change."

My Name is Mina

by David Almond

The birds were silent. The air was still. I climbed higher in the tree, to where I could look down into the nest, and there they were, three of them, lying so prettily in the pretty nest. They are bluey-green with brownish spots and they are absolutely beautiful. Bluey-green and speckled brown and beautiful. I almost cheered, but I stopped myself. I wanted to hold the birds in my hands and praise them, but of course why should they take notice of me? Why should they care what I might think? But I say it now anyway, deep inside myself: "Well done, blackbirds! You are extraordinary! You have created the most beautiful things in the world! You have created new universes."

The Hunger Games

by Suzanne Collins

Deep in the meadow, under the willow
A bed of grass, a soft green pillow
Lay down your head, and close your sleepy eyes
And when again they open, the sun will rise.
Here it's safe, here it's warm
Here the daisies guard you from every harm
Here your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them true
Here is the place where I love you.

Deep in the meadow, hidden away
A cloak of leaves, a moonbeam ray
Forget your woes and let your troubles lay
And when again it's morning, they'll wash away.
Here it's safe, here it's warm
Here the daisies guard you from every harm
Here your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them true
Here is the place where I love you.

The Help

by Kathryn Stockett

By the time I found out, he was dead.

That was the day my whole world went black. Air look black, sun look black. I laid up in bed and stared at the black walls a my house. Minny came ever day to make sure I was still breathing, feed me food to keep me living. Took three months fore I even look out the window, see if the world still there. I was surprise to see the world didn't stop just cause my boy did.