FICTION
 

• Someday, My Prince by Barbara Bradshaw
 
So, together we stepped up onto the merry-go-round and stood across from one another.  Putting one foot down on the ground, we pushed in unison until we were spinning joyfully out of control and holding on for dear life.  A moment captured for me forever in time, his merry brown eyes twinkling as he laughed with me, and those two lovely dimples sparkling like diamonds in the sun.

• Beyond This by Angela Carlton
 
At night, I read to you, read you Browning's poems as we lie between the paisley green sheets with our tri-colored terrier nuzzled at my feet. I read until we float away and you come to me faceless in a dream. Rose-colored skin, thick around the middle and smiling, you mouth the words I cannot see or hear, leaving me breathless when I open my eyes.
• Sergeant of Drummers by Brooks Carver
 
The word came down that the army was sending him home through enemy lines to his mother. He didn't know the particulars because he hadn't gotten a letter from his mother for several months, but Luke knew that he liked it a lot better here with his soldier friends than chopping cotton and hoeing corn under his father's strict and watchful eye.
• The Door by Corey Mesler
 
James sat on the piano bench and studied the room. He had memorized its every contour, its minutia, like he had memorized the wallpaper at the dentist’s office, which depicted a sylvan scene of indeterminate time, a swirling, off-green representation of a world that, really, never existed.
• Chimayo by Christopher Woods
 
All we could be certain about was the road itself, and where it would take us. How we came to be on that road, the one leading to Chimayo, was of course a different matter.

• Daybreak by Laura Stamps
 
There is a place 

behind a cat’s ear 

as sweet as summer 

jasmine, as soft 

as the satin 

purse of a mink.

• Echoes by Ryan James Wilson
 
In the deep rural silence

of this, your old plantation house,

I hear them playing together:

tiny feet stomping the hardwood,

squealing voices chasing each other,

shrill giggles muffled in the thick, late-night air.

• On Wearing Earplugs by Jessica O'Connor
 
My husband has grown accustomed to the barely audible sound of rolling earplugs. Whenever he doesn’t hear it, he knows something’s unresolved; it’s my signal (often unbeknownst to me) that I still want to talk.