by Joyce Lee

You know the insanity has always been there, hidden within the stories, secreted from the norm.

It’s there when, as a child, you sit by the lake with your younger cousins, weaving stories of sun fairies and shadow gnomes that dance on the wind-kissed water. They giggle and ask for more, and it’s just a story to them, but you see defined essences latent in the alternating sparkles and shadows, skimming the skin of your reality even as they skitter across the surface of the water, a refined actuality that soothes and satisfies,

by Laurie Blauner

photo by Tony Wallin-Sato

As a teenager I was exuberantly ashamed of my crooked teeth, although they weren’t my only problem. If I did smile, I covered my teeth with my palm. So my usual facial expression was comprised of rococo motifs that formed an impression of seriousness and concentration. This was fixed with braces and a horrible contraption called an “orthodontic headgear” that consisted of metal rods, one that circled the outside of my mouth and one inside that was connected to my braces, plus a strap around the back of my neck that forcibly moved my teeth with its cinching.

by Meredith Jelbart

This cabinet, which I gift to you, my child, has ten rows of ten small drawers. Standing flat against the wall, it takes up little space. It is beautifully crafted; dark wood of the drawer front meets the lighter interior wood in dove-tailed joinery, a dark tail interlocked with a lighter one, a darker, then a lighter and so on.

It has come down in our family, from a great-uncle’s garage, to my study. To wherever you may choose to keep it.

You could say it’s an heirloom.

by B. Luke Wilson

mezzotint by M. Rapine, curtesy of The Public Domain Review

Heat That Smells Like Drowning 

I drew a perfect tesseract on my son’s old Etch-A-Sketch seconds before the bomb fell. Nobody ever saw it, or how beautiful the shape was. The tremors began light as the air under the muscles of a dancer—and grew until their shaking dissolved my perfect symmetry into the toy’s memoryless sands. Everything flashed to red, and the heat smelled like drowning.

My wife Sarah was a master locksmith.