BY RACHEL LEANNE DELAURENTI

My father once told me that love and desire are like flames. He told me to be careful with my heart, that he didn’t want me getting burned. I think he knows from experience.

Sometimes when we talk, you can see him recoil from thoughts, as though his heart has been scorched and scarred from loving too hard, and he will never fully recover. If that’s the case, if loving you is going to burn me, then draw near me.

BY JORDAN NISHKIAN

You feel that the street Sophie is driving you down should be familiar; and there are little things that are, like the faded posters in the dry cleaner window and the pastel awnings of the gelato shop.

After getting into her car at the hospital parking structure, Sophie told you that you’ve been living in the city for almost five years—one year on Fourth Street and the rest at the apartment she’s taking you to now. While she told you this, she studied you and your movements, relieved when you slipped your arm under the seat belt and buckled in.

BY KAURA GRANDE

At sunrise he is filled with wild fire, flames flashing gold, so vibrant they illuminate the landscape. He is alive and his breath breathes warmth and life across the plains. By midday he is at his strongest, scorching the Earth, he burns with radiance, shines with fury, flaunts his heat.

BY REBECCA CARLYLE

The acrid smell of smoke burned through her nostrils from across the street. The middle-class suburban row of houses was darkened by clouds that hid the moon, all except for the single house that was ablaze. Even from here, she could feel the heat of the flames that licked the sides of the building. Her cheeks were flushed from excitement and exertion. It had been a battle to get outside of the burning house before the exits had become inaccessible.

BY LESLIE GONZALEZ

You wonder about the shadow in the corner of your eye. It’s been following you now since you left his place half an hour ago. You first saw it when you walked through the front gate of his apartment. He hadn’t seen it because he hadn’t walked you out.

BY DEANNA NGUYEN

A chime ripples the still night, unheard by those who dance in the garden of dreams. In a rowboat that weaves its way through Lunea’s water canals, a hooded figure sits with a fox that’s curled around her shoulders. The fox’s vaporous form emits a white haze, her eyes golden and glowing. As their destination approaches, her ears prick up. The fox jumps off the young woman’s shoulders, leaving smoky tracks that dissipate before she lands atop the bow. All the while, the bell’s song resonates from around the fox’s neck.

BY JORDAN NISHKIAN

You, my air,
you bury me—
hold me under,
carry me with you.

BY LIZ MICHAUD

I hated this fucking house. I didn’t want to be on this ugly rock. Not like you. You said you felt something close to magic here at Coal Beach, but there was nothing enchanting about the surly old fishermen in this coastal ghost town.

And now I’m trapped here and you’re missing.

BY NATE BUSSEY

Sometimes I feel the incorrigible need
to get into hot water. I'll draw myself
a bath, raise the temperature by degree
the way you cook lobster,
plunge my ears beneath the surface
to listen to the water I'm making filthy

BY GILES STUART

She knew she was dead when she woke up.

She wouldn't have been so sure but for the fact that she'd been dead before.

A minor surgery had turned into a twenty-four hour nightmare when a routine appendectomy revealed a latent heart condition. Only five, she barely remembered dying. She hadn’t really made much sense of living yet, so having nothing to contrast, her perspective was about as mature as a mayfly’s theories on evolution.

BY HOLLY KING

The greatest lie she ever told
herself was that her spine
felt burdened from violet
rosebuds pushing out
of each crack in the cement.
That thorns broke open troves
of forgotten dreams.

BY AUDREY KEMP

We have encountered her before,
The femme fatale from myth and lore --
The emblematic minx or tease,
Who conjures chaos in the breeze.

Snap. Gone.

Screeching siren
songs snatch
me out of everyday daydreams
I escape to—

BY TABITHA LAWRENCE

Gifts from my mother: coarse tangles of hair in clumps and spirals, soft helmet of frizz, lavender tinged legs, big Italian snoz. Lots of sisters and, much later, lots of brothers. And something else, but I can’t put my finger on it. Sometimes she speaks of things as though I should know what she’s talking about and I wonder if I do, somewhere in the tide pools in the back of my mind.

BY TAMARA LINDSEY

Lover hear my harmony.
Come find me.
Search the midnight fury.
I’m crying.

BY BRITTANY LAWRENCE

His siren call was elsewhere, leaving the wreckage behind. Me, broken on the floor with all of my pieces. Left in the middle of a shipwreck, he took my treasure and was gone. I watched as the parts of me he didn’t want lost their last hints of shimmer as the sun set, and then there was just darkness.

BY REBECCA CARLYLE

It rocks me slowly, occupying
my crevices,
everything is soft here, the touch, the sound, the feel.
I am a blemish in this
pulchritude.

BY HJ MORALES

Tides sway washing sand waltz
grandma's hands scrape soapy ribbed metal.
Foam brews, grunts splash in the air
salting lungs, cleaning carbon.

BY JORDAN NISHKIAN

You once heard that you could figure out which way was up by following the bubbles.

You weren’t sure when it had started, but the tinnitus that haunted your right ear had now wrapped around your head and entered your left. At first, it was something you only heard in silence—now there were days when the ringing was nearly debilitating.