isis the mother - by Ella Irvine

I saw a woman parked, wiping her cheeks in the driver’s side dome light. My breath caught— I wanted to rush forward and rap on the glass, tell her: me too, me too! I fall in love with boys who don’t love boys, grew my hair out for a girl I don’t speak to any more, when my friend hanged themself last Winter with an iPhone cable I spent all my time in bathrooms and bus stops and cars alone too, only able to cry sitting in places I couldn’t stay. Talk to me, and I’ll long you tightly. It’s irresistible having your heart broken every day. The car spluttered alive and rolled away, and I stood motionless in the dim-lighted parking lot.

Pearl Drizzling City

by Jay Guo

Even on this warm stucco roof at the edge of the sky I shift, wishing for rain, canned coffee and brown bag lunches, dirty elevator reflections, asphalt so slick it gleams the moon.

This is how time passes: roved beneath streetlights, scraped against sheets, caught fast and numbfingered between earlymorning flights.

This is how the weeks fill: naps in clouded light, air so cool it smolders your lungs. The sidewalk crowded with young people and grieving ones, too, all shifting and wishing the rain to patter in ways that say—it’s okay, we never imagined life like this either.