Aisha couldn’t remember how she got here. All she knew was the inky night sky, clouds blotting out light from the stars, and the all too present silence. She patted the ground around her with outstretched palms, searching for her glasses on damp dirt stirring a moist, earthen scent that filled her nostrils. The absence of them pressing down her nose was stark and worrisome.

“Ugh.. why do we even have to do this Mexico week thing?” one girl complained.

“I don’t know…” the other shrugged with an apathetic sigh.

“You have until tomorrow to start, refine, and finish your projects. I will NOT be grading any duplicates,” the teacher admonished.

Then, interrupting her lecture with a booming voice, “JOHNATHAN," reducing the students’ whispers to silence, “Grab your things. I will see you in my office.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to drive?” Thomas asks from the passenger seat of my uncle’s new Tacoma.

“Of course, I’d rather you drive. But my uncle said I have to. Something about insurance not covering you,” I say. My uncle’s conditions for letting us borrow his truck were don’t scratch it, no drugs or alcohol, and I have to drive.

I bite my nails until my mouth tastes like iron and my fingers are sore. “Why are we doing this again?”

BY JORDAN NISHKIAN

“You can trust people with grief,”
she says, piecing together a bouquet
of bee balm and blueweed.
My fingers pick at heads of sea lavender
I carry through tides.

BY MICHELLE HERD

When I ask my mother
What her greatest pain
Disappointment, un-
Fulfilled, dream is she replies:

“Well it really is more of a
Fantasy, than a dream…”

Burn It All

Burn it all he tossed the words over his shoulder
while he walked out the door without looking back
leaving her in a mess of cold, dark, shattered ruins

BY LIZ MICHAUD

The first form I ever took was air.
I was not quite a thing,
I was the idea of a thing.
Nebulous in my obscurity.
Perfect in my imprecision.
Affable to every flit of the breeze.

BY C BRESNAN

Plunging deep, I'm drenched
with more humanness, grasping
hope and love to rise.

BY ANDY NARANJO

Like dried wine on stone
My eye is tinged with the reflection of droplets
Akin to the vine

BY EA BAKER

The Season of Flame

The wildflowers that once
gilded the hills and
valleys have become
tarnished,
fading into brown

BY JANICE PEREGRINA

Inside every sacred soul
Lies an enrapturing phoenix in repose
Her crumbling wings enfold upon themselves
Hiding from the world

BY HJ MORALES

Constantly spinning on space’s finger
At a million miles an hour
But the sand buries my toes
Like a silk sheet on a breezy night.

BY HOLLY KING

Here is what they don’t tell you.
That through idle hands we must kill.
My sister gave me this warning five
years ago while she pruned
her bougainvillea in the garden.

BY ANDY NARANJO

Before his eyes were planes of red and vermilion sands. Above him passing were clouds of magenta floating in seas of aquamarine skies. Behind his eyes resided an imagination sprawling through pious temperaments. The sun set behind mountains that climbed over the city horizon. Lying in desert beds, on the cusp of the cove, Jouye scaled mammoth stones.

BY DEANNA NGUYEN

At first, everything was pitch black. I blinked. Okay, so my eyes weren’t closed. Also, I had eyes. I patted my body and touched my face—all intact, clothed, and completely human. A lucid dream then? I pinched my skin as hard as I could and winced. Nope, definitely not a dream.

BY PETER WILLIAMS

The Corinalth Colonization Program had proven disappointing in the six months it had been active. While maintaining a breathable atmosphere similar to Earth’s, the planet’s soil had proven inhospitable to any form of edible vegetation. From what the scientists in the colony had concluded, the nutrients naturally produced on Corinalth were not enough to keep seeds alive long enough for them to bear fruit.

BY GILES STUART

Dad set down the glasses, making a “clack” in time with the amplifying weather. Drawing my attention to the windows, the hail pelted the panes of glass, scuffling dull the last bits of light as it disappeared behind the mounted ridge, leaving a purple disco effect in the room—the last taunt of twilight before nightfall.

“I had a nickname for you as a little girl. Do you remember?”

BY REBECCA CARLYLE

You can always begin again.

It is a singular notion that has echoed, rattled, slammed, and whispered through your mind with every step.

What would that be like?

The night sky calls to you as it always did, with the pureness of its beauty.

Will you be the same?

BY PETER WILLIAMS

Her name was Phee, and she was the bravest warrior I had ever met. I had seen her face down ogres, trolls, and even giants without hesitation. She could swing a sword with such grace that it was like watching a vicious dance. Even when she was relaxed, her hazel eyes smoldered orange with the heat of battle.

I loved her with every fiber of my being.

BY JESSICA R. WOEHLER

Listen close, lovers of the light, and know the truth of how darkness flees. For darkness does not shrink away because of what we build up inside, but rather because of what we choose to let go of. A concept simple in statement, perhaps, but far more difficult to put into practice.