Radium Girl Dreams in Technicolor
Tiny Molecules | Digital
"The song ends, my mouth widens, and I vomit out the aurora borealis, soaking the front of my smock. The neon greens and fluorescent purples and pinks are entrenched in my pores, tethering themselves to the coils of my DNA like bindings."
If Monet Had Painted the Western United States
Bulb Culture Collective | Digital
Originally published in Rhythm & Bones, 2019
"We pull into a gas station—the first one we’ve seen in over an hour—and step out to stretch our legs. The sun has beamed down all afternoon, sitting on the horizon like low hanging fruit ready to crack open and spill its shimmer over the Plains."
A Game of Lava Floor on the Way to Breakfast
Emerson Review | Print Issue & Digital
"Sugar crystals pop between my baby teeth; oil lines my throat like lubricant to make way for a
new language I do not yet know about."
The Ghost of Habits
Rough Diamond Poetry | Print Anthology
"When my mother dies, I pull out the ironing board,
its screech a banshee of unmet requests as it opens.
Fold the fitted sheet this way and tuck in the edges.
Hold the shirt sleeves taught to avoid imprinting wrinkles.
I iron my underwear for the first time and laugh at the absurdity of it."
Checking Out
Blue Mountain Review | Digital
"The fist in his ribcage bloomed open and the fingers reached through the bones like a prison cell’s bars, poking and prodding his chest as if he had been hollowed out. He remembered what his sister had told him on a call once when he was crying that he couldn’t catch his breath. He stood in front of the yolky chickens, fatty and yellow and stacked under fluorescent lights, counted his breaths and slowly released, thinking about maybe becoming a vegetarian."
Small Fortune
Lover's Eye Press | Print & Digital
"“It looks like you will be going on a long journey,” the old woman says, her soft, crackling voice permeating the boy’s thoughts. “You see this here,” she continues, knobby pinky finger pointing at one spot in the cup where little pointed patterns traverse along the bone white wall like little waves. “That’s water,” she adds. “It looks like it will be a long journey.”"
London Independent Story Prize
At the Edge of the Woods, a Sanctuary and a Mausoleum
Rising Star Selection | Print Anthology
"It had begun with the boy’s great-grandfather, whose ghost haunted the family lineage; a disgraced legacy that had stitched itself to their home like a pox, claiming one generation of boys after another."
On Summer Mornings, I'd Walk Through the Woods with my Grandpa
Bending Genres | Digital
"Memory is the uninvited guest that demands too much, takes more than it gives. Remember the summer you’d walk to the creek with your grandpa, it asks with a lilt of a demand in its voice. Remember how you wanted to take the goose’s eggs home for breakfast?"
Saying I Love You in Albanian
Eunoia Review | Digital
"When I say I love you, what I mean is: I’m composed of two halves in constant battle with each other. They shake
hands and agree that wanting you fills my cup rather than depletes it; that loving you fills each
crevice with a knowing that whichever language I’m speaking, your name always sounds the
same."
The End Finds Me with My Dog
Atticus Review | Digital
"I know things must really be dire because my dog settles down beside me and rests his head on my shoe instead of pulling and whining until we’re up and walking again. I look down at him and think, how do you stay so calm, but I imagine beneath his layers of fur and skin and muscle and bone, deep in his heart that speeds and slows at the simple pleasures and scares of life, he’s harboring the same unease I am."
Originally Published in Rhythm & Bones, 2019
Godiva Leaves Town
Bulb Culture Collective | Digital, Reprint
"Hidden in the shadow of two stone buildings, she stretched out, her fingers and toes brushing the soft, warm hide of her beloved pet. Her hair fell over the horse’s flank and she imagined herself fusing with him; melting into his body to become some mythical creature. What life she could lead outside the city walls."
Blue Light
BULL | Digital
"My wife tells me I don’t understand what it’s like being a young woman, but I suspect she doesn’t either, it’s been so long. Anyway, ever since my friend and I stopped talking and my daughter and I kept missing our weekly calls—what, with the time difference and all—and now learning Christmas will be just another day with more house chores to tackle, I started having this tightness in my chest that comes and goes like a rubber band snapping into place over and over again."
The In Between
Alan Squire Publishing | Digital
"Audrey knew it was fucked up to be both scared of and intrigued by the demon. It slipped out of the shadows of her bedroom like ink spilling onto the page, the darkness following as It crept closer towards her. It, too, seemed intrigued by her, though she wasn’t sure why. Perhaps It had had enough of non-believers, of sitting and waiting to be heard—acknowledged."
If Death Was Just a Better Decade
Laurel Review | Print Issue
"I hope death is like a Friday night walking into Blockbuster, all fluorescent and brimming with choice and possibility; of short-lived disappointment over unavailable selections, knowing that what we want will always come back in stock; that time is limitless, and the titles are always rotating."
Lies I Tell Myself to Fall Asleep at Night
Bright Flash Literary Review | Digital
"The salty waters of my body rise towards it and lower again with the sun, and before I doze, I think of how you are the car, and I am sometimes the rushing water; other times I am the debris rolling downhill—both the destroyer and the destroyed."
The Quiet Room
Ex-Puritan | Digital
"The whooshing teased her; it sounded so familiar. Louder and softer, and louder again, like waves lapping up the shore before retreating, regrouping, and rushing in once more. It sounded like water running through the pipes behind a wall when someone flushed or took a shower in the next apartment over. Lola strained her ears until she finally picked up on the sound at its loudest, emanating from her core, from her own body."
Chestnut Review's Stubborn Writer's Contest Top Finalist
A Child's Birth as a Seismic Shift in the Universe
Midway Journal | Digital | 2022
"The midwife hands her the pin and it sits unblinking in the mother’s palm like a seed waiting to be planted to keep ominous energy at bay. Before she can pin it to her baby’s blanket, it pricks her thumb. The blood springs to the surface like another tiny, monstrous eye that stares up at her in judgement before she puts the thumb in her mouth and sucks."
Where the Road Takes You
Sledgehammer Lit | Digital | 2021
"You look up at the third floor at what used to be your bedroom. You wonder if the delicate blue wallpaper is still up. If the person who sleeps there now pretends that they, too, live in a fancy little Victorian house. That wallpaper felt old worldy to you then, so all your doll games took place in some tragic Victorian setting where a pretty young lady died with blood splattered lips from consumption."
Good Girls
Tramspet Journal | Digital | 2020
"Ermina thought of her husband before he was a husband, before he was a father. When he was twenty and unscarred and convinced her that she was different from the other girls he usually fooled around with. “You’re one of the good girls,” he’d said the night they first slept together, right before she opened herself up to the possibility of being both good and human.
Before she could imagine a mother being sexual without the thought of children."
Best Microfiction Nomination
A Stubborn Woman Gives Nothing
Jellyfish Review | Digital | 2020
"But another belly eclipsed the sun. Another misshapen child sprung from her body, another child the gods could do nothing with. (A stubborn woman’s body is poisonfor what grows within it, like dry soil that yields no flowers.)"
I Am the Breeze That Shifts Your Hair
Riggwelter Press | Digital | 2019
"“Did you die here?” they continue. “Did you kill yourself?”
“You can’t ask them that,” says a girl. “They might not know they’re dead.”
I want to press my lips to their cold box and whisper the secret that we all know we’re dead, that we’ve always known. On the bridge, a woman breaks away from the group and wanders over to where the dirt trail begins. Away from the hissing and crackling static, the questions falling all over each other, she stands facing the dark tunnel of trees and holds the dowsing rods firmly in her hands. She closes her eyes, bracing herself for sincerity."
Soundtrack
Barren Magazine | Digital | 2019
"I scrunch up my face in the bathroom mirror, getting so close I can count all the extra eyebrow hairs I want to pluck. I survey my face like a map. Stray hairs are growing around my upper lip, light and flimsy, as if they too are unsure of their existence."
The Flight
KGB Bar Lit | Digital | 2019
"“I heard my grandmother,” said Edi. “Out there. In the woods. She said my name. Just like your stories, I heard my name from someone who was dead. I’m meant to die here,” and his voice caught on the last word and Edi broke down. The priest could do nothing, only blink quickly to keep his tears from falling and put his hand on Edi’s shoulder."
The Silent Siren
Crack the Spine | Digital | 2018
"The first curious vessel that glided by prompted her to swim up to it, curious at the looming presence. It was sleek and steel gray. The bow, like the pointed nose of a shark, broke through the surface of the ocean with command. She swam close to it and observed that there were no barnacles, no splintered edges to catch fire in a sinking."
This is How a Sister Mourns
Ellispis Zine | Digital | 2018
"It happened sometimes, where her mind wandered while her hand continued to move, rhythmically stirring. The taste of milk couldn’t be too milky. The sugar cube had to disintegrate completely. She hated the crunch between her teeth when she’d take a sip. She hated her sister’s ashes sticking to the back of her throat like wet sand at the beach."
The Unintentional Ways of Timelessness
New Flash Fiction Review | Digital | 2018
"They say it’s all about the eyes but it’s really in the hands when it comes to mothers; fingers stroking through tangled curls until eyelids drooped heavy; heart lines running east to west, deep and long as rivers. The sense of endlessness in time had never been so palpable."
PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story prize Nomination
Towards Avalon
Cleaver Magazine | Digital | 2017
"So even at his most critical moment, when fear would perhaps have been the most appropriate and undeniable emotion, Dritan forced his legs to move beneath him until the tops of his nostrils stung with the urgent inhalation of bitingly cold air. His eyelashes dripped cold saltwater as if it was flowing from inside of him, as if he was born from it. Remembering that he indeed had been, he kicked harder with whatever energy he could drag out from deep inside, beneath the aching in his chest."
The State of Things
Cotton Xenomorph | Digital | 2017
"I sit and remember stories, like how grandma beat a soldier with a brick after being attacked on
her walk home from work, or how she climbed trees as a child, a tomboy in a sea of frilled dresses and
straight postures. I think about her hands wrapped around her rolling pin, flattening the phyllo against our granite
countertops; imprinting those movements in the stone as if to say: I was here—remember me."
The Static Noise of Adolescence
Kindling Volume III | Print Anthology | 2016
"For a moment crossing over the imaginary divide, the radio would be completely overtaken by white noise as if we were
suspended in limbo, or a no man’s land. Then, just as suddenly, the station would come back to life with the distant, crackling voices of the show’s hosts, and we’d be back on the map."
Rituals
Five:2:One | Digital
"“Do you ever wonder why we feel the need to whisper around the dead?” Alba added, her voice hoarse as if she hadn’t used it in one hundred years and was learning to speak all over again. She looked over at the older women across the room and lowered her voice. “They always tell us to keep our voices low or to walk lightly. But is that more for the living or for the dead?""
Prologue from Tree of Blood and Milk
Gone Lawn | Digital
"In the privacy of my own home when the curtains are closed, I can’t help but think about my first life and quietly remember that I have two birthdays; that I am a magnificent creature of dualities, even though the basis of my life has been firmly rooted in one identity over the other."
Water Beast
Glassworks Magazine| Digital
"The girls time themselves perfectly, one after the other, like a dotted line of mythic water beasts, slick flesh with pearled droplets rolling off bony shoulders and long legs, not a hair or peach fuzz in sight. When the coach calls my name, I pretend it is not me and when she turns around, clipboard in hand, I pull the towel closer around my shoulders and get up to slink away unnoticed."
God is a Dog at the Edge of the Woods
Moss Puppy | Print
"I like to pray at night by the woods, in passing while my dog sniffs at the same territory he lays claim to by day. I watch him move methodically, his body weaving through the darkness, his eyes reflecting the moon’s alabaster light like two holographic orbs piercing through the inky night."