Love Song

Faith Cantrell

I babysat you that same afternoon. You did not want to play or watch a movie. You wanted to learn guitar. I was not thoughtful like that when I was seven: I fell asleep with candy in my mouth; I burned computer paper out on the porch; I scratched plaque off my teeth with a dirty fingernail; I plucked limbs from big daddy long legs without a single care in the world. But you strummed every chord you could reach and wrote a love song for your mother. Hummed it, softly from the backseat, as I drove you to your grandparents’ house.

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Let Him Go

Mason Scurry

Shake his hand. Remember his smile. Jitterbug at a party. Meet him on Wickenden. Sip an Americano. Take a photograph. Take another. Give him everything. Cry in the shower. Take it back. Console him. Text him. Text him again. Text him when he answers. Text him again when he doesn’t. Drive somewhere up north. Trap him in a promise. Forget him. Refuse a pill. Swallow the next one. Facetime through the night. Trace his image. Shut him out. Bring him back. Love him. Hate him. Kill him. Resurrect him. Set him free. Really, release your grip. 

Leave him be.

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Cha Cha Cha 

Camryn Suntha

“Mom, I love you and Jesus,” I sputtered through bloody gauze.

My tongue rolled like a balled Fruit by the Foot, foreign to my mouth. “Did you get the trophy?”

She chuckled and rattled the four wisdom teeth inside my foggy urine specimen jar. I snatched it, shimmying with the world’s goriest maraca.

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Provincetown

Olivia Stacey 

By 2 p.m., high tide will cover the middle of the rocks completely. Locals lie on the slanted slabs, sunbathing in the setting Massachusetts sun. The race must start now. 

“Colin gets a 10-second head start. Zachy waits here. Go, Colin, go!” Dad yells.

Colin starts leaping over the uneven rocks. He looks back every five seconds to see Zach’s neon shirt and sunscreen-covered ears quickly approaching. They will run until their blonde hair is just a bobbing point on the horizon.

10 years later. Colin doesn’t need a head start anymore. 

I never thought that’d change.

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Anya

Elysee Barakett

My advisor says, call me Anya, and brings cookies to meetings. I can’t write a thesis, I say. She smiles. I’ve never had an advisee quit. You won’t be the first.

Anya treats me to dinner and asks how I met my boyfriend. She tells me about meeting her son’s girlfriend and how she and her husband met. She gives strong hugs. I decide I’ll write a thesis to spend more time with her.

A day before one of our meetings, I learn from an email that Anya died unexpectedly.

I don’t want to be her first advisee to quit.